


The Antihero Complex

by HastaLux



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Antiheroes, Hux Says Eat The Rich, M/M, Superpowers, Supervillains, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-17 21:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21550228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HastaLux/pseuds/HastaLux
Summary: Kylo Ren is a villain. He wears black, he beats people up for a living, and he takes his orders from Snoke instead of following his mother's goodie two-shoes merry band of heroes. So why can't he stop rescuing that hot redhead who seems to have the absolute worst luck of all time?
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 36
Kudos: 208
Collections: Kylux Big Bang 2019





	1. Even Capes Like Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Kylux Big Bang 2019. Original concept and art by Ninpotato (https://twitter.com/NinPotato1 and https://ninpotato.tumblr.com). Posting every few days until complete!

Kylo waits in the darkness, as is expected. There’s a certain system to such things, a certain number of expectations to meet. Darkness to cover all sins, of course, but mostly because only the top tier of villains make enough money to get away with working in the daylight (and frankly, most of those just skipped the middleman and go directly into politics).

Everyone else needs to keep a day job.

That goes for their marks too. Today’s assignment is a thick-faced man named Ormes who has made the grievous mistake of owing money to one of the shadier branches of First Order Industries. Snoke occasionally makes concessions for those who erred if they were legitimate business contacts, as his own facade of an honest profession was necessary to mask, however poorly, his less savory interests, but there were no such concessions for the average debtor. Certain perceptive heroes might know of Snoke’s true nature, but they certainly never get close enough to tie him to any crime directly. 

People like Kylo make sure of that. 

He drops into alley just as Ormes passes it, slamming him into the ground. A quick flick of the wrist as Kylo steps off him pins the poor man to the wall, already bleeding and quivering and pissing himself, which means this is going to be exceptionally boring.

“You have a debt to pay,” he growls out of the voice modulator. 

“No- listen, listen, I’ve got the money, I only need a day-”

“You should have paid it already.” He hardly even needs to work for it. Ridiculously boring. They all blend together after a while, the interrogations and intimidations. Half of them don’t even require even a gentle press from his abilities. They’re far more scared of the mere mention of Snoke’s name than they were that some huge man in black was punching them into a wall.

If he had the energy he’d be offended, but he doesn’t. It’s just a job, and it’s way fucking better than anything he’d been doing before. _She_ , the woman who birthed him, treated his abilities like a political opportunity to be trotted out on command, and if he dared step a foot out of line there’d be hell to pay (hell being endless lectures on proper decorum and the obligations one has to society). He couldn’t stand the hypocrisy of it. No one knew about _her_ particular skills, after all. She’d seemed more annoyed than pleased when her son demonstrated some of the same talents, if more of her brother’s line that her own, but she’d latched onto the idea that he could become a Big Damn Hero. Someone to show off at her fundraisers as a symbol of her benevolence. The sort of man she’d always wished her powerless, erstwhile husband might turn into.

Unfortunately for her, much like her ideal of a husband, the boy she wanted him to be didn’t really exist. He never even got near the spandex and symbols she probably already had picked out.

In a way she was probably lucky that he hadn’t been in the spotlight yet when he decided to bail. It’s easier for him too. No one cares about one politician’s unemployed son going more or less off the grid. They would have cared a lot more if a full-on hero vanished. 

The roughing-up he’s been assigned goes about as well as normal. The man cries, he promises the world, and Kylo follows him to an ATM to make sure he completes his obligations to Snoke.

Boring. Tragically, endlessly boring.

He’s completed three more “casual reminders” of obligations to Snoke by the time the first glimmers of sunlight reflect off the metal and glass of the city in rosy pinks and oranges. That’s the end of his shift, when all good villains go back to their holes and leave the heroes to strut about in the light of day. 

The sun rises over grey, dirty buildings, golden light tarnished before it even meets sidewalks marred by chewing gum and cigarette butts. Kylo watches it with a coffee poached from the cafe below. He just puts a small suggestion in the head of one of the baristas and levitates it out the window as soon as no one’s looking. Honestly, that’s a better use of his skills than any of his ass-beating assignments for Snoke. Sure, he can hit like a truck, but that’s common. Telepathy and telekinesis are far more specialized, but it seems like Snoke does everything he can to keep Kylo from focusing on those skills. 

As he sips, he watches the people below, subtly continuing to _suggest_ that they keep their eyes off him. No one looks up.

Instead, _he_ walks down the street.

Kylo has seen him a few times before. Gorgeous redhead, always in a fabulous suit. There’s been little glimpses as he hurries to his morning coffee, always in a hurry, always frowning. He suspects the suits are cut to make the man look broader, but Kylo has spied that thin waist. He’s pretty sure he could get his hands around the whole thing.

If circumstances allowed, of course.

Hot stuff in the suit gets his usual morning muffin, claiming a table just before the morning rush of executives comes in earnest, clamoring for their extra large no-fat lattes or whatever it is rich people in business drink. The suit gets his coffee black. From the little Kylo has seen, that seems on-brand. Bitter, not sweet. Sweet is for people capable of smiling.

He’d never consider going down there normally, especially not when he’s still wearing his work gear. It’s too black, too menacing, too stained with bloodstains if one happens to look close enough. He just watches, sipping.

In fact, he’s about to take off for his mess of an apartment when he feels it. Low reverberations, a sort of pulsing in his ear, the thing that’s always let him know just before some shit is about to go down. Kylo’s eyes flick downward. What shit could possibly be going down before 7 in the morning? All the villains are sleeping it off and the heroes who don’t get paid enough to wear a cape full time are stumbling into whatever job is offering decent health insurance and no night hours. 

He sees it a second before it happens. There’s a barista rushing with a tray loaded too high, probably running it to an overworked intern who’s in turn running it to several overpaid executives. The tray tips just before passes Hot Suit’s table, ten steaming cups of coffee tipping toward him–

Kylo’s hand is out before he even complete a thought, the coffee stilling in mid-air. Hot Suit looks up with a vague look of surprise, the barista making a series of startled noises as she stares at her frozen-in-mid-fall stack of beverages, eyes wide.

Kylo leaps down from the roof, dramatically slowing his descent just before he reaches the cement for maximum cape billowing effect. He might not be able to shoot lasers out of his eyes or teleport or call up a storm, but that’s never stopped him from putting on a good show.

Well, mostly a good show. Because he’s focusing on holding the drinks up, he doesn’t actually check his trajectory, and ends up in the bushes.

Which hopefully no one saw.

At least Hot Guy doesn’t look up until he forces the bushes apart and steps through, hopefully looking cool even though his costume and most of, well, himself, is built to have the best effect when it’s dark out. Bright morning sunlight highlights the little details of his costume, but it also makes it pretty damn clear that he’s a guy in a mask. 

He nudges the cups more or less back onto their tray as the barista bobbles it, catching… most of them. But the rest spill on the sidewalk instead of Redhead Hottie so that still counts as a victory in Kylo’s book. 

He swoops closer, perching on the end of the table, deepening his voice before it even runs through the modulator, striving for sensual brilliance. Heroes pull this shit off all the time– rescue someone and turn it into a quick fuck, maybe a few dates. Villains don’t usually get the same opportunity. 

“Hey.” 

Hot redhead looks _very_ unimpressed. In fact, he doesn’t even look too worried about nearly being drenched in steaming coffee. _Maybe he’s not actually awake yet._ Kylo frowns behind his mask. That’d be fucking frustrating. He put in effort for this and hottie didn’t even notice! “I’m sorry I had to step in, but I couldn’t live with myself if you were scalded.”

One red-orange brow drifts upward. “Oh?”

 _Fuck._ He should look interested. Grateful, at the least. But this guy is neither, he’s just… staring. Aloof. _Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck-_ Kylo counts his blessings that no one can see the face he’s making in the mask. “A gorgeous man like you, it’d be an awful tragedy if you started your day off with a lap full of… burns.” _Fuck._ He sounds like his fucking father, but _less_ suave, if that’s even possible. 

“So you’re… rescuing me? From coffee?” The redhead’s voice doesn’t move off the fucking dry British sarcasm it seems to be set to. 

Kylo’s brow furrows. “I-”

“Right. I don’t suppose you have anything more pressing to be doing.” Hottie gets up and strides off without a backward glance. There’s a clatter and splash as Kylo’s concentration falters and the barista’s tray falls. 

_Goddamit._

How dare he? 

Kylo strides off into an alley, finding a dark spot out of view of any cameras to shed his mask and cowl and hurl them into the concrete wall, growling and cursing. How fucking dare he? That was- total bullshit. That asshole didn’t even look at him! And he did a- fucking decent thing. Sort of. A little self-interested, sure, but Kylo’s well aware he’s no hero.

He’s probably not a great villain either.

“Balls.”

He shoves his costume into a thin collapsible duffel he keeps in a pocket on his belt when he’s “on-duty,” exiting the alley looking like he’s just got off some sort of late bar shift. Tight black pants and a black hoodie cover an awful lot of sins. 

As he stalks out, his bicep smacks into something firm.

The redhead looks up at him, eyes cold, his briefcase slamming sharply into Kylo’s thigh as he stops suddenly, then immediately barrels around Kylo without a second thought. “Watch where you’re going.”

Kylo’s so surprised that he doesn’t react until the man is halfway down the street.

His feet turn.

He knows this path. There’s always a chance that Hottie is heading for the subway, or the bus, or one of the other tall buildings with a big logo affixed to the top. But with that suit on- the surly attitude-

 _Shit, it can’t be that much of a coincidence._

Following about a block back, it’s easy for Kylo to subtly suggest that everyone around him just not quite look at him, that no one pay too much mind to the hulking figure in black. But that flame-orange hair is easy to mark, all the way into the revolving doors of First Order Enterprises.

_Fucking hell._

Hottie works for Snoke too. On the _legitimate_ side, sure- Kylo doesn’t go in through those doors, and this company doesn’t give him any tax forms to fill out. But they do share a boss.

He rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. Snoke doesn’t like the two sides of his business to interact. Plausible deniability exists for a reason, for both him and his tax-paying, charity-endorsing business. People like Kylo are meant to stay silent and obscured in their place in the dark, with nothing to tie them to the office or the man at its head.

It probably wouldn’t be bad if he just kept an _eye_ on the hottie though. Just a look, from time to time, when he was done for the night and asshole redhead was getting his coffee.

That would… probably be okay.

He finds himself still thinking about it when he wakes up again in the afternoon, sprawled across sheets that could use a wash with an empty pizza box still on his coffee table. The redhead would definitely sneer at that. He’s not sure why it matters, but picturing that arrogant jerk near his bed makes his stomach flutter.

It might be a little bit of a turn-on.

 _Dammit._ He must be in way too long of a dry spell if _that’s_ working for him. He’ll just look. A little. A few times. What’s the harm?

***

Redhead hottie has a routine. 

Which means Kylo now has a routine. 

He wraps up his overnight work, such as it is, whatever pummelling of some poor sod Snoke has ordered that day. None of it feels very important. Lurking about outside the coffee shop is much more interesting.

There’s a good game to be had in it. Each day he follows a little further down the road, tracking the streets the redhead appears from. It is, technically, stalking. But Kylo is good at it! It takes him just a little over a week to figure out that the redhead lives in one of the big condo buildings not far from the First Order offices. He walks the whole way to work, no public transit required, not that Kylo thinks he’s the sort of man who would ever be caught dead on a city bus.

He’s also learned that the redhead is quite possibly the most accident prone person on the planet.

Every car that passes even the suggestion of a puddle sprays water at him. Any construction site he walks near will inevitably drop something in his path, be it paint or a heavy wrench. Kylo instinctually averts them from afar at first, just watching. The redhead doesn’t seem to notice.

He creeps closer.

By the end of the first week Kylo is practically escorting the redhead to work. He makes his influence steadily more obvious. He works from the other side of the street, from the tops of buildings above.

Later, it’s standing on cars next to the redhead and from literally next to him on the sidewalk.

The redhead always acts like he doesn’t notice, but he has to, and it’s ridiculous beyond belief that he keeps staunchly ignoring Kylo. No “hi,” no acknowledgement that Kylo is helping him, even when Kylo is standing beside him and actively narrating the bullshit he’s stopping. “Paint can. Water.” No matter what he does, the most he gets is a slight lift of a ginger brow. 

Until the car.

The idiot’s trying to gun a red, the redhead steps out into the crosswalk, heedless as always of any danger-

Kylo _pulls_ with all the might of his mind, yanking the redhead back onto the sidewalk and catching him. He’s light for his height (though most people are for Kylo), and his waist fits nicely in Kylo’s arm. 

For once, he looks surprised. Kylo bets if he concentrated he would be able to hear a fluttering heart beat- though that might just be his own, because it is racing in a way it never does when he’s kicking the shit out of someone in an alley. 

The car honks, flying past them both like _they’re_ the assholes.

“Are you-” Kylo clears his throat deepening it further even with the modulator. “Are you alright?”

“Fine.” The redhead’s voice is just a little shaky, but he rights himself quickly, extracting himself from Kylo’s grasp and adjusting his suit back to some semblance of his usual pressed look. “I’m fine.”

“Good. I, um- fuck, that was close, you know-”

“You’ve been following me for a while.”

Kylo blinks. Okay, yeah, so he has. And he’s been noticed! Which is what he wanted. Only he has still been hoping for a nice dramatic thank you and maybe some swooning, which this is… not. “Yeah. You, uh. Murphy’s Law hates you.”

“Mm. It’s been said.” The redhead looks him over, and Kylo can’t help but feel inspected. It’s not a sensual gaze, only evaluative, just like he’s analyzing data instead of appreciating Kylo’s obviously amazing body. “What’s your name?”

“Kylo Ren.”

The eyebrow lifts again, just a fraction. “Of the Knights of Ren? And here you are, heroically rescuing a civilian. I thought that was outside the wheelhouse for your people.”

“It’s… complicated.”

“I see. Well. You may call me Hux.”

Kylo nods. “Hux. It’s nice to-”

“I must be going. Keep up the good work, Kylo Ren.”

Once again, Kylo is left vaguely confused on a sidewalk as dawn breaks on the city. None of this is going the way he wants, but at least he has a name now. _Hux._

***

He only loses a little sleep to looking up “Hux” and “Hux First Order” and various other search term variations thereof. An hour. Maybe three. The man- _Armitage_ , according to the little bit Kylo could find online- has nothing of interest to find, which is driving him nuts. There’s only the scantest social media presence, like he set them up just to claim the user name and never went any further. No dating accounts, no blogs from high school he forgot to delete.

It’s annoying.

Kylo does have an address, though and he’s excited to peek into Hux’s windows and see… something. Probably just boring overpriced furniture. Maybe a glimpse of him shirtless. Not that Kylo’s looking for that, specifically, but the dude is hot and it feels like Kylo ought to get _something_ for protecting him from random shit all week (which is a good reminder that he is, in fact a villian, and should fucking act like it from time to time lest Snoke decide to intervene in his daily tasks more directly).

Stalking definitely counts.

Hux’s condo is nice. Kylo arrives there early one morning, scanning the windows of the fourteenth floor. It’s not really the fourteenth floor, it’s the thirteenth, but some people get nervous about that sort of thing. 

The minute Hux sees him, the blinds are slowly and pointedly closed.

When Kylo meets him on the sidewalk later, Hux doesn’t look at him or greet him, but he does accept Kylo’s presence at his side as one large dark hooded escort to work. They march in silence until the first crisis of the day is averted. Today it’s a bike messenger drifting onto the sidewalk. Kylo just levitates the rider past, ignoring the confused screaming. 

Hux makes a quiet hmming sound. “You do realize it’s usually considered impolite to peer in people’s windows.”

“Is it?”

“Generally.”

“Lots of things I do are… impolite.”

Hux’s usual frown slants into a wry smile. “Oh, trust me, I realize. But you’re still out here defending the public. So curious.”

“Not the public. Just you.”

“Then I feel even more special.”

Kylo buys Hux’s coffee that morning anyway. Not that he thinks he needs to make up for the whole stalking thing. He doesn’t. He’s a villain and that’s in his damn purview. Just because he feels like it.

“You should ask first,” Hux says at the end of the walk, when he’s peeling off to walk up the stone steps to the First Order building.

Kylo blanks. “For what?”

“If you’re going to peer through someone’s windows. You should ask first.”

“I should?” Hux’s ginger brow lifts higher. Kylo can’t quite escape the feeling that he’s being mocked or teased or- _oh, balls, actually_ \- maybe flirted with? That seems like a reach but maybe- maybe it’s that. If only Hux’s accent wasn’t so damn hard to read… but he’s got fucking superpowers, dammit, he shouldn’t be so nervous about this! 

He clears his throat, thankful yet again that his mask keeps him from letting anyone know if he’s blushing. “Would you mind if I peered through your windows, Hux?”

Hux makes a quiet noise that just might be approval. “I suppose I wouldn’t mind if you visited the balcony.”

If Kylo were not a halycon of evil, he might swear his contractually cold, dead heart flutters a little. “Sure. Sure. So maybe I’ll see you there.”

When Hux turns away Kylo thinks he catches the flash of a brief smile in the mirrored glass. “Maybe you will.”

***

Kylo’s schedule slowly adjusts. At the start of his shifts, before he has to go pummel people in the face for a few hours, he lands on the thirteenth floor balcony and lets his cloak wave in the wind dramatically until Hux feels like opening the door. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes Hux pretends he doesn’t see Kylo, and Kylo can’t quite bring himself to rap on the window. It feels like it would disturb whatever… whatever this is. Their _chats._

Sometimes Hux comes out and sits with him, glass of red wine in hand, and asks him about his night. At first Kylo is a little wary, because no sensible person pries into the daily life of a self-avowed villain, but… maybe he isn’t looking for sensible. 

“Does it hurt?” Hux asks, swirling his dark red wine around his glass.

“Punching people? Sort of. I’m kind of used to it.”

‘Show me your hands.”

Kylo hesitates over removing the gloves. It feels oddly intimate to reveal any part of himself when he’s in the costume. The costume covers everything- hides everything. That’s the point.

He knows his hands aren’t particularly attractive. They’re bruised and hardened, calloused from lifting weights. The gloves keep them clean, at least, but that’s about all to be said for them. Hux’s, on the other hand, are soft and pale. He has a few marks too, old small scars that look like someone scattered ash too close, but none of the wear that Kylo’s bear. 

“Did anyone teach you how to fight?” Hux’s eyes evaluate his hands closely. Kylo has no idea what he sees there, but it must be interesting enough.

“Not really. I’ve just always been good at- you know. Starting fights.”

Hux’s lip quirks up. “Ah, juvenile deliquency.”

“Something like that.”

His hands fall as Hux retreats to his cushy balcony chair. There’s only one. Hux clearly isn’t the sort of person who expects company. “I’d offer you some wine, but I suppose you’re about to be on duty.”

“Yeah. Night hours. You understand.”

“The graveyard shift, so to speak. I did my time there. But I don’t suppose you get a 401k and health insurance with the Knights of Ren listed on it.”

“No, not quite. But we do have connections. Doctors, whatever.”

“Sure you do.” Hux’s lips are wine-dark, almost bloody looking in the dim light of the city’s endless dots of apartments and businesses, streetlights and cars. Stars never reach it, but Kylo can’t help but think how nice they would look reflected in Hux’s eyes. “Well then. Go make your mischief, Kylo Ren.”


	2. With Friends Like These

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo has an unfortunate run-in with his former allies who are very bent on making him "good" again.

He should have accounted better for the cameras.

The close ones, those he can turn away and fuzz. None would catch his face, even if he wasn’t wearing the mask. But there are ones out of his range, very high on buildings and peering down with the detail of a satellite, watching and relaying to forces that think they’re much better at deciding what right and wrong means.

And things like stopping cars to save pedestrians get noticed.

“I saw you save him.”

She’s on the roof behind him, already dodging before he can instinctually turn and hurl something her way. Her skills are similar, though she’s always been sneakier, a more subtle approach people are less likely to hear coming. The mere mortals of the city dubbed her Hope, and that’s become her mantle when she’s out fighting off people like him. But that wasn’t the name she was born with. “Go away, Rey.”

“No, Ben. Talk to me. I saw you. Stupid mask or not, there’s only one idiot your size who could stop a car with a thought. Talk to me.”

He debates running. But then there’d be a chase, and he just  _ knows _ Snoke would find out, and then he’d be in trouble on both sides. Snoke is not forgiving of anything that looks like a slip-up. Better to hash this out as fast as possible, then get out and on with his night. Preferably without giving Rey anything to take back to his mother, because she absolutely would rat him out.

“I don’t have anything to say to you. I left for a reason, Rey. I’m out.”

“You’re not out. You’re up here, doing who knows what for god knows who. In a costume. In a  _ costume _ , Ben. I’m not blind. You saved that man from a car. You can come back, work with us again. We’d all- everyone would be so happy to have you back, Ben.”

“Not interested, Rey.” He can’t. He can’t, because they’d make him talk to his mother, to his father, to fucking  _ Luke _ \- and that’s- they still think he’s just some kid they can mold. 

Kylo is years over trying to make himself into something he isn’t. 

“Ben-”

“Stop calling me that. Ben Solo is gone. You have to move on. So do the rest of them.”

“No.” Rey’s voice is forceful. If he were an average mortal, it would terrify him. As he is, it only pisses him off. “You might be having some sort of edgelord villain fantasy out here, Ben, but your skills are dangerous. You could  _ hurt people _ , do you understand that?”

He turns, growling, feeling the anger well. It’s the easiest source in the world, easy to channel into so many of his abilities. And its palpable, with him, in gentle sparks of red that send most people running. 

But much like him, Rey is no average mortal either.

“What if I  _ enjoy _ hurting people, Rey? What if that’s the real me?” He takes a few steps closer, but she doesn’t flinch. He’s always respected that about her, even if she drives him crazy. “You all can keep your self-righteous circle jerk morality.” 

“You have goodness in you, Ben-”

“I don’t care what’s  _ good. _ ” The sparks well up, spinning in brighter red and gathering around his arms like radiating halos. “I care about  _ me, _ now. Which is more than the lot of you ever did. I do what  _ I  _ want. And all of you should keep the hell out of my way.”

“No.” 

He knew it’d be  _ no _ , but somehow it still irritates him to shit. Rey is  _ infuriating. _ Always has been. A small part of him- a very small part- still feels like she’s a younger sister, the kid kicking him in the shins while he’s trying to do homework. 

That doesn’t stop him from unloading a blast at full force toward her face.

She  _ shifts _ , turning away, the burst passing beside and through her suddenly half-transparent form and connecting with the building across the way in an explosion of brick and mortar. Her eyes look hurt when she glances back to him, welled with tears and determination. “You have to stop this, Ben. Or I will make you stop.”

“Rey, you do not want to test me.  _ Go. _ ” His throat is already raw with suppressing the force of his welling anger, so when she flickers and runs toward him he unloads. Some of it hits, he knows that- he’s known her long enough to know she is not entirely immune to his skills.

But she has apparently learned how to hit a bit harder in the last few years, because the strike that meets his cheek is not the unrefined, almost feral strike she was inclined toward when they trained together. She’s fast- she’s always been fast- but she’s worked out how to phase in and out with her strikes, timing the blows and the dodges. Kylo has to focus nearly all of his ability to skim even the surface of her thoughts to anticipate her strikes and hit back with the right speed to even make an impact against her semi-ethereal form. 

Rey isn’t fully ethereal- she isn’t a ghost, her body exists, it just slides back and forth between atoms in a way that tricks the eye into thinking she’s either not their at all, or that she’s in several places at once, depending on how someone’s brain tries to process the confusion of information. She can’t go through someone, but she can get close before they realize she’s even coming. 

They trade blows, sparks of red mixing with flashes of pale, translucent blue.  _ Hopefully too high for some shitty cell phone video to end up on the internet.  _ That’s the last thing he needs, Snoke pissed at him for fighting  _ and _ drawing attention to himself by going fucking viral. 

_ And what would Hux think? _

Hux knows he’s a villain and doesn’t care. It’s never bothered him, even if they aren’t- if they don’t- if there’s no label on what it is they’re doing, exactly. 

But he has saved Hux. Repeatedly. 

Some stupid need for heroism that’s gotten him back on Rey’s radar after he’d managed to stay out of her way for years. 

Only- he wouldn’t give up saving Hux. Even half a ghost of a smile from Hux makes him feel like no stupid photo-op moment his mother and Luke dragged him to ever did. 

_ Shit. _

Maybe just for him, then. Kylo would be a hero for Hux. Just his hero. That’s all.

His heart races thinking about it, and his concentration wavers. The tenuous level of insight he has into Rey’s mind cuts off, sharply, and he doesn’t see it coming when she smacks him round the temple and sends him skittering onto his ass into the cement wall of the roof. She rips something off her belt and he feels a pulse of something that flashes orange across his vision, tearing into his nervous system and freezing all of it as his vision darkens.

“I’m sorry, Ben. It’s for your own good. I’m sorry.”

***

He wakes in relative comfort. There’s a bed, clean sheets. Different clothes. His costume is elsewhere, traded out for soft sweatpants and a t-shirt not his own. If it weren’t for the smell of poorly cooked cinnamon rolls he would have no idea where he was.

_ Shit balls cock fuck- _

This is the worst possible outcome he can imagine. Not only did Rey beat him in a fight, which is bullshit and definitely does not count due to whatever tech she’d used on him, but he’d been dragged  _ home. _

“You can stop pretending you’re asleep, I know you’re up.”

His mother’s voice has roughened since his youth from years of leading protest chants and giving speeches to activist groups, but it still makes a part of him want to flinch away. He rolls away, keeping his eyes on the wall. It’s safer than looking at her. “I’m sorry, I don’t negotiate with people who take me hostage.”

“Ben. This is for your own good. You’re a danger to the city.”

“I’d believe you if it didn’t sound so self-serving.”

“Enough.” He’s heard enough orders in that tone- usually directed at his father- to know pressing the issue is entirely futile. Her mind is made up, and she won’t hear anything else from him on the subject. A shifting of plastic tells him without needing to look that she’s put the cinnamon rolls through some sort of panel into his cell. “Eat some rolls. They’re your favorite.”

“They were my favorite when I was six.” Frankly, he’s shocked she even remembers that. It’s not like she was ever home, and he never went out unless it would help her image to be carting around her kid on camera. 

“Well. I bet you still like them.”

“Did you make them yourself?”

There’s a rather pregnant pause where he can just  _ feel _ her weighing whether to take the question as rude or not. “Poe made them, actually.”

“Right.” Of course he did. On the upside, that meant they’d be decently cooked, no risk of salmonella from his mother’s dearth of skills in the kitchen. On the other hand, everyone thinks Poe is just perfect enough without Kylo weighing in on the subject. “No, thank you.”

“Hiya, Ben.”

Kylo rolls over. Poe is sitting there, off to the side, mostly hidden by a computer screen. He has the decency to look sheepish as soon as Kylo’s eyes are on him, ducking away again. His mother’s sitting on the other side of some sort of thick plastic, arms folded, daring him to say something, which he does. “Has he been here this whole fucking time?”

“Ben, Poe is a valuable member of this team and your friend-”

“Lie, on both counts.”

“That’s kinda rude, buddy.” It’s incredibly stupid that Poe is only a few years older yet somehow manages to sound like a fucking elementary school teacher whenever he’s trying to imply Ben- no,  _ Kylo, _ just Kylo now- is doing something stupid. “We just want to help.”

“I don’t  _ need  _ help. I was just fine before you decided to stick your damn noses in everything. I’m not getting the band back together, and we all know this isn’t a happy family reunion, so just let me go back and handle my own shit. You stay out of my way, I’ll stay out of yours.” He hates that there’s even a whiff of desperation about it, but he  _ cannot _ be stuck here forever. There are things he has to  _ do _ , dammit! Who’s going to look after Hux and the hard-on Murphy’s Law has for him without Kylo around?

“Fine. You can sit there and think about it. But you aren’t going anywhere.”

She retreats to the corner of the room Poe’s desk is in. Kylo can hear Poe muttering to her, asking if she’s okay, if she needs anything. He rolls his eyes. There was a time when they were young that Poe found anything Kylo did with his powers absolutely riveting, begging to help Kylo train. He was jealous, a little, Kylo could sense it, but he never let that overpower their friendship. 

At least until Kylo started proving to be a disappointment.

Even without powers, being Leia Organa’s favorite must have its perks, not that Kylo would know. But Poe’s still here, his voice heard and even valued, and Kylo’s in a cage.  _ Blood is meaningless. Absolutely meaningless. _

It shouldn’t piss him off as much as it does. 

Sadly, there’s nothing to throw in here. Leia’s bolted everything to the floor to eliminate what she would probably call his  _ tantrums. _ The plastic they’re using has to be something special too, because he can’t  _ reach out  _ like he normally can. His mind can’t touch the things on the other side of the clear wall, and it can’t brush against either Leia or Poe’s thoughts. He can still feel the connection, so he hasn’t been cut off entirely, but it’s like trying to see through frosted glass. He can’t quite get a grip on any of it.

_ Balls. _

That poses a bigger problem when it comes to Snoke. Snoke is used to being able to reach him as needed, and Snoke is the strongest telepath he’s seen. If Snoke reaches out, and Kylo isn’t there… he doesn’t know what that would mean. Would Snoke even come after him? And if he did, would he assume Kylo left on his own, betraying him? Or would he think Kylo is some child that needs saving?

Neither option is good.

He keeps thinking on it as he stews, only nibbling at the food that’s passed to him. There are no windows here. It’s hard to tell time. Leia rarely leaves. From what he can tell, she’s taking her meals at the desk in the room. He tries to ignore her, but he’s still hyper-aware of her presence and every long gaze leveled his way that he pretends not to see. He can tell her words are all meant for his ear, too. She’s far too conniving to say anything in front of him without expecting him to hear it, which means none of it will really matter.

She never says anything to him that really matters.

He lets his mind wander. It lands on a pale face, stuck between a sneer and a smile, and for whatever reason that makes him feel… a little better. 

Hux is probably at work. Or has it been long enough that he’d be home, sipping his wine on the balcony? That would mean he’d had a whole day without Kylo around to protect him. What if he’d been in an accident? Sure, he’d been fending for himself for a long time, but Kylo’s been safeguarding him for a while now. Anyone could get a little complacent with a super-powered man keeping an eye on them. Without that, he could have been crushed by an air conditioner, or hit by a bus, or had coffee poured on him-

“Hey.”

Kylo looks up. Leia is gone, and Poe stands there instead, arms folded, safe on the other side of the plastic. His lips purse. There’s no way this isn’t going to be a lecture. It’s refreshing to know that he was right about all of his supposed family and friends when he left. They’d rather spit their own morality at him then ever consider listening to a different point of view.

At least villains don’t lie about it when they do that. They know who they are. So does Kylo.

“What, Poe?”

“You really ought to be nicer to her.”

“Should I?”

“She’s your mother. You only get one.”

“That isn’t true, is it, Poe? You have a perfectly good replacement for yours.” He knows it's a callous, cruel remark. If he was capable of giving more of a shit the look on Poe’s face would sting. As it is, all he can hope for is that he pisses off Poe enough to make him do something stupid. Like opening the fucking door to the cell. That would work nicely.

Poe shakes his head. “You know, I had real hopes for you once. You were going to lead this team. We were all so fucking sure of you, you know that?”

“I suppose that was your first mistake.”

“Maybe. Yeah. But the nice thing is, we don’t need you anymore. And not just because Rey outclasses you in almost every possible way, including being a fucking decent person.” He taps something on his wrist, a white and orange band Kylo had taken to be some hipster fashion choice, and it begins to glow and whir. An image pops out, like a hologram radiating out of his forearm, showing a massive metal suit that must be even larger than Kylo’s broad frame. “I’m going to help her. Power free. And none of us will ever need you again.”

The words are bitter on his lips. “I don’t need you either.”

“Sure you don’t.” The hologram vanishes. “But you’re gonna have a lot of time to sit in here and think about that.”

Poe doesn’t snap. He must have gotten his temper under control in the last few years, or at least he’s smart enough to know going in to fight Kylo would be a bad idea. When he leaves, a metal door closing heavily behind him and the room goes dark.

_ Fuck. _

He lets his head fall back against the wall. Snoke will definitely be looking for him if he doesn’t report in tonight. He needs a way out. The furniture in the room might be able to slam through the plastic walls- he’s pretty sure they don’t have a way to dampen his abilities within his little cell- but he needs to get them off the industrial screws that bolt them into what feels like a thinly carpeted cement floor first. The carpeting sadly means his stupidly thick fingers can’t get in to turn them, which is annoying.

So he sits on the floor crosslegged, frowning at the comparison to all the meditative training he’d had when he was far younger and more optimistic, and focuses on very, very slowly turning the screws with his mind.

It’s horrifically boring, and he even nods off a time a two before he even gets one out. There’s no way he’ll be able to manage enough to get the bed or the chair up before Leia or Poe come back, and with no windows he can’t gauge what time of night it is. With the boredom naps he’s been taking it could be hours or it could be minutes, there’s no way to be sure.

The second screw is only a quarter of the way out when he hears the door open. There’s no point in diving back into bed, but hopefully whichever one of team self-righteous has come to check on him will just assume he’s meditating. 

But the voice that breaks through the darkness is mechanical and robotic. “Obstacle detected. Rerouting. Rerouting.” 

There’s a whir as something shifts across the floor, making its way toward the plastic wall. A dull red glow comes into view as it draws closer. 

It’s a… roomba? Or- maybe not a roomba, exactly, it looks modified somehow, but Kylo is definitely not up on the latest in office cleaning technology. 

Something is stuck to it though, something Kylo can’t quite make out in the darkness other than that it looks like a slightly different color. 

“Rerouting. Rerouting. Error. Err...or. Innnn- in- interference de- de- detected. Error. Overheat warning. Warning. Warn-”

As soon as it hits the plastic wall the whole thing explodes. Plastic shatters around him as he instinctively thrusts out a psychic barrier to avoid taking any of it to the face. Remnants of uneaten cinnamon buns stick, scorched and stale, to the opposite wall. He stands in a mess of ash and scattered dust, gaping at the hole blown in the side of his custom-made cell.

“What. The fuck?”

No one responds. 

It takes him a second, blinking with confusion, to realize that such a loud explosion will almost certainly bring someone back to check on him. It’d be stupid for him to stay. Right?

Cautiously, he climbs through the hole. 

The plastic cuts through his shirt, scraping his skin- it’s not really big enough for him but he’s making it work. As soon as he’s out he raids the nearby closet- as he’d suspected, his mother had hung his costume up, shutting it away where she didn’t need to look at it. He drags it on over his outfit, all except the mask, which looks like it cracked during the fight. That he carries at his side. Rey-  _ Hope _ \- must be getting stronger. He’d be impressed if he weren’t so annoyed. 

At the door he finds that there are smears of some sort of foam, like a construction filler or something in that vein, holding it open by half an inch. It’s just wide enough for him to get his fingers through and yank it free from the adhesive.

Up the stairs, there’s more signs of construction and insulation related carnage. Unsurprisingly, he seems to have been brought to the “private office” his mother uses as the effective headquarters for her little vigilante group. There’s shouting down the hall, he can hear Poe yelling something about a power short. Creeping forward, he has to jump out of the way behind a water cooler as a flourescent lighting panel drops from the ceiling, but just a second later he has to duck further as the sound of running announces someone else dashing past. At a glance it’s Holdo, one of his mother’s other partners in both a political and recreational sense, and a peripheral member of the informal band of so-called heroes (although he’s never quite been sure what her special skill set is other than glaring at people until they do what she wants). 

After she passes, he dodges around the corner and jogs the other way, looking for steps further up or a window, any way to get out. The stair to the loading dock looks unoccupied, and for a moment he considers running that way- but if he remembers right, his mother always had that under heavy camera cover, just in case anyone made the horrifically stupid mistake of trying to break in. A lot of the rest of the compound does not have recorded video specifically to prevent the members of her little troupe from being caught on camera.  _ Plausible deniability is a necessity for a life in politics. _ It’s one of the only things she’s said that makes Kylo think his father had rubbed off on her, at least a little. Even if she’d never admit it.

He jogs left, cutting down the hall toward the stairs that lead up toward the second floor. He creeps up toward the door, darting out and slipping past the doors to the second level of Poe’s lab. Inside, a massive white and orange suit stands dormant. Part of him wants to head right in there and smash his hand through it, but he’s pretty sure there’s people in the lower level of the lab and he can’t risk getting put back in his mother’s stupid basement prison.

There’s a discreet little balcony near his mother’s office, which he knows damn well because it’s how his dad used to sneak into the building. Kylo’s always thought it was strange she never had it closed off, but he supposes there’s no accounting for taste and she really does love the idiot, even if half the time she also wants to kill him. He slips out the door and peeks over the side. The jump down should be no problem- he has his powers back now that he’s out, or at least he should- although now that he thinks about it, he didn’t get any real warning from his usual senses about Holdo walking by, and he really should have. 

Tentatively, he tries to reach out with his mind and close the door behind him.

It’s slow, but the door moves. The connection doesn’t feel as strong as it usually does.

Kylo runs his tongue over his teeth. He’d been working on the screws, and that felt normal, albeit tedious. But they were just small things, the door is much heavier. 

She hadn’t… she wouldn’t have. Would she?

_ The fucking food.  _ No wonder she’d made a point of telling him to eat. There must have been something in there, something to dampen his abilities. 

Good thing he’s never trusted her cooking.

“Are you going to lurk up there all day?”

Kylo peeks over the balcony. Hux is below him, looking up from a motorcycle and holding a second helmet. He’s wearing motorcycle boots as well, and a very dark black leather jacket, all of which feels so foreign to his tailored suits that Kylo has to blink for a while into the dimly lit alley to make sure it’s actually him. It’s so surprising that for a moment Kylo forgets to breathe.  _ How the fuck- _

“Come on, we need to get a move on.”

It doesn’t feel like he can speak. Kylo jumps down, landing harder than usual, but it’s not that far, not really. Silently, he takes the helmet from Hux’s hands, glancing up in time to find a strange expression crossing that pale freckled face as their eyes meet.

_ Oh. _

He isn’t wearing his mask.

Kylo swallows, hard. His mouth opens, because Hux came for him, didn’t he? Somehow, Hux came, and Kylo is supposed to thank him for that.

But Hux never thanks  _ him, _ does he? Kylo's rescues are never met with praise or gracious compliments.

He buries the impulse and hopes the vague sense of heat on his cheeks doesn’t mean he’s blushing. “Took you long enough.”

“Yes, well. Some of us have jobs.”

The motorcycle revs. Kylo feels a bit odd on the back of it, the width of his frame far more expansive than Hux’s slimmer chest. But he doesn’t really mind how it feels to lace his hands about that waist and feel the heat between his chest and Hux’s back. 

No, that’s not bad at all.


	3. Fair Remuneration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo spends some quality time at Hux’s place. For his own protection. And definitely not for any other reasons.

Hux drives them fast through the city, darting into a ramp down into the garage under his building and parking. Kylo swallows again as he takes the helmet back off. “Listen, I can make it back to my place from here. I know they’re going to be looking for me-”

“Don’t be stupid. They know where you live.” Hux glares at him with those icy blue eyes. “You’ll stay with me.”

“I’ll- what?” He must not have heard that right. Hux is a civilian, Kylo can’t put him in danger by-

Hux steps into his space, jamming a finger into his sternum. “Here. Where I can keep an eye on you.”

“You? That’s- Hux, that’s thoughtful, but they’re- I mean you realize they’re like me, ri-”

Kylo’s words disappear into a muffled grunt as a leather gloved hand closes into his hair and yanks him into a sudden, forceful kiss. “I was… concerned,” Hux growls against his lips before letting him go. “I do not enjoy worrying about you.”

If Hux weren’t right there, warm and speaking, Kylo would assume he’s either blacked out, or this is all some sort of hallucination. Maybe he’s still in the cell, maybe they brought Luke over to give him one of those fucking vision quests that will supposedly purify his heart and mind or whatever, but he’s obviously too much of a gay disaster to think of anything but the latest hot boy.

He puts his hand out cautiously, brushing against the leather jacket over Hux’s collarbone.  _ Real. He’s real. _

_ And he did come for me. _

“I’m, uh… I’m sorry you worried.”

Hux’s pale skin turns a touch pinker.  _ Oh god. Oh god, he’s cute when he blushes.  _ “Well. Don’t do it again.” He locks up the bike and marches toward the elevator. “Come on. Let’s get you upstairs before your friends get any idea of where to look for you.”

The polished metal inside reflects a distorted, maskless Kylo Ren back at himself. God, he’d been stupid. If Hux hadn’t been there, he might’ve run out into the city, and if anyone saw him, or he’d gotten on any CCTV, that’d be it. The costume is pretty recognizable, even without the mask on, and it’d only take one dedicated person to figure out who he was. 

God, he was lucky that Hux brought the second helmet.

“Hey- how did you find me, anyway?”

A flicker of a smile crosses Hux’s lips. “Let’s say when you didn’t appear at the usual time I made use of a particular skillset of my own.”

“Which is?”

“In my early years I designed a predictive software program to assist in the early detection of crime. While I was still in college, actually. The city gave me a grant to test it out using their CCTV.” The elevator dings and those cool blue eyes flash smugly toward him. “They never remember to update the codes. I can still peek in, when I want to.”

“Oh. That’s- is that what you do for First Order?”

“To an extent. I have degrees in both computer science and mechanical engineering. It keeps things interesting enough.” He unlocks a door at the end of the hall and gestures for Kylo to enter.

He’s never seen this side of the apartment. It’s not visible from the balcony. There’s a massive tropical fish tank burbling away, a wall that seems to be composed of running water, and a scattered array of carefully maintained bonsai and orchids. 

It also means the apartment is much, much larger than he’d originally thought.  _ Does he own this entire side of the building?  _ That must cost a stupid amount of money, but… maybe if he’d sold some genius invention or something…. Kylo had always heard there was a ton of money in patents, but he’d always been a bit more “I watched an internet video” DIY and less academically inclined to learn the nitty gritty of how shit like that works.

“Is this… you’re the only one who lives here?”

“Mmm. I don’t usually enjoy people enough to feel an inclination toward roommates. Or guests, really. Speaking of- I realize you were forced to flee a building, but you’re quite filthy. Take a shower, I shall arrange food and see if there’s any clothes to be had that might fit you.”

He’s escorted to what appears to be a guest room. It’s sparsely decorated, looking more like a hotel than anything else, save a small, abstract wire sculpture on the nightstand. The bathroom is nice, with the showerhead mounted rainforest-style in the ceiling, which means for once he actually get hit by the whole spray. Hux must have the same issues- they’re not that far off in height, so he has no doubt they’ve both experienced the joys of needing to duck six inches to actually wash his hair.

He runs the last few hours over in his head as he stands there in the warm steamy air, letting the water course over him. It still doesn’t make much sense to him. Hux knew he’d get out, obviously, but that didn’t really explain the explosion. Unless Hux built a bomb? But it hadn’t looked like he’d even gotten into the building….

Maybe, this one time, Kylo had just gotten lucky.

His costume has vanished from the room when he comes out, and in its place there’s a silky black robe. The height is right on it, but it’s too narrow to fully close on him at the top, leaving a deep vee of chest visible. When he comes out he watches as Hux’s eyes descend across the exposed skin, the ginger pausing to have a deep drink of red wine before bringing them back up to Kylo’s face. 

Kylo gracefully resists the urge to preen. 

“I’m afraid my current selection of wardrobe isn’t really your size, but I’ll have something brought in. In the meantime your other ensemble is being laundered.” 

“This is fine, actually. Fancier than my usual.”

“I’m sure.” Hux beckons him over to a large dining table that has a selection of Chinese food on it. “There isn’t much open at this hour, so I hope this meets your needs.”

Chinese food being a staple of both the superhero and supervillain diet, Kylo has no objections. Many a costumed person would starve if it were not for the industrious restaurant owners that had long ago realized there was a good deal of money to be had in offering takeout to the city’s masked madmen at 3 or 4 or 5 in the morning. 

“So, I realize you can like- hack CCTV or whatever, but there is still a possibility Re- I mean, um, Hope- that she’ll try to sense me. If she’s close enough, she might realize I’m-”

“Don’t worry about it. I have precautions.” Hux walks to the nearby wall and pulls the painting on it, opening it like a door to reveal a series of electronics and heavy metal plating. “There’s quite a lot of people with a great deal of money who don’t like the idea of being spied on by those with gifts they can’t control. Your friends won’t be able to look in here unless they fly over and peer in the windows directly.”

Kylo eyes the wires, the glowing bits of green and white within. “And do those people… pay you to protect them?”

“They do. It’s amazing, isn’t it? They all say it’s because they worry about being robbed by a super, but… really, you don’t get to sit on that sort of cash without doing something that ought to get you arrested.” Hux shrugs. “There’s always new powers in the world, of course. I can’t account for everything.”

“Is First Order selling that?”

“Mmm. But I own the patent. It’s only licensed to the Order. Part of my hiring package was that I maintained my own intellectual property. Snoke can pry those patents out of my cold dead hands.” Hux closes the panel and returns to the table to nibble on a spring roll. This must be breakfast for him, Kylo realizes- there’s light breaking in from the balcony. 

“Are you- do you have to go to work today?”

“It would be prudent. I rarely miss work.” Hux eyes him curiously. “Would you prefer I didn’t?”

“I….” Would he? It would be selfish to ask him to stay just because Kylo isn’t sure how to entertain himself for a day. What would they even do? It’s not like they’re officially together or anything, and most of their interactions have been Kylo rescuing Hux from gravitationally inclined stupidity. Kylo normally sleeps during the day anyway, so…. “Whatever is fine.”

A ginger brow flicks up. “How about this. When I return here tonight I’ll bring something with me that will hopefully let you move about with a bit more freedom.”

“That’s considerate.”

“It’s prudent.” Hux drifts around the apartment as Kylo eats, the motorcycle outfit being shed for one of his suits. Kylo watches him out of the corner of his eye. It’s sort of soothing to see him… normal. Styling his hair and pouring tea. He must not have gotten any sleep at all, but that hardly seems to bother him. “Alright. The tv is all yours. Please don’t go in my bedroom. I have some engineering projects in there and while I know you are quite competent in a fight I do not trust you ability to manage biomechanical wiring. Yes?”

“Sure, that seems fair.” 

Hux gets his briefcase and jacket, aiming for the door. “Get some rest, then. I’ll be back early evening.”

“Wait.” Kylo wraps a hand about Hux’s arm, his heart rate picking up for no particular reason. “You’re sure they won’t- no one will go looking for you, right?”

“I made sure I was off the cameras. But I appreciate your concern.”

“Okay. Okay.”  _ Why _ is this hard? Kylo chews his lip. He has no problems punching pretty much anything, but get him in a room with a hot guy and he implodes.  _ Maybe that’s my weakness. Hotness. Hotness that shows up on a motorcycle and plays hero. Sort of.  _ “You, uh. Downstairs. You, uh- could I?”

He watches as Hux blinks for a moment, processing as Kylo stumbles through what he actually wants to ask. His cheeks pinken again, just enough to set off the blue of his eyes from his pale skin.  _ Ah, fuck. That really is cute.  _ “Ah. Yes?”

“Okay.” 

Kylo leans forward. 

This kiss is far more gentle, soft and- though Kylo would hate to admit it- maybe a little yearning. Hux tastes like red wine and the tea he’s been drinking, a mix of acidic fruit and bitter leaves, but Kylo likes it all the same. It’s longer, too- drawn out, with neither of them seeming to want to break off. Kylo lets his fingers run over the hem of Hux’s suit, and he can feel Hux’s much slimmer digits brush the hips of the silky robe he’s been leant. 

When they do finally part, there’s a palpable pause before Hux hoists up his briefcase. “Right. Back in the evening, then.”

“Alright. See you then.”

Kylo spends much of the day asleep. His internal clock is still set for nocturnal activity, and with how much his schedule had been messed with by a day in Leia’s custody he needs even more rest than he’d usually get. Hux’s place is strange to wake up to. New bed, new sounds. The fish tank and the little fountains mean there’s a constant sort of white noise overriding any sounds that would drift in from the street or the hall. It makes the place feel really, really private, which he supposes is the intention. 

The entire day feels luxuriously lazy. He eats their leftovers when he’s hungry, watches tv, and lies around in his borrowed silk robe. He hasn’t located the laundry room, but he also does not feel the urge to but his costume back on. He sleeps nude, after all. There’d be no point. 

And it’s nice to feel normal for a little while.

Hux returns as promised, a new bottle of wine and groceries in hand. Kylo dithers for awhile, debating whether he should try to offer Hux a kiss at the door, but they aren’t really on that level yet. “Do you cook, Kylo?”

“Basics, sure.”

“Let’s try to improve from basics, then I’ll show you the little gift I’ve brought for you.”

Hux, it turns out,  _ can _ cook. 

“How’d you learn?” Kylo asks as he watches vegetables steam.

“Necessity, mostly. I found my way on my own early, and I needed to eat. One can only skip so many meals to study before you pass out. So I looked up recipes. In college I even had a system to maximize my nutrient intake so I could spend more time in the lab, but now it’s simply a matter of preference and time. If I am going to cook, I prefer to take my time with it and do it well.”

Kylo nods. He’d been more of a protein shake sort of guy, or things that come in boxes with labels telling you what to do with them. But it wasn’t as if Leia was ever home making multicourse meals for him either, not with causes to champion.

And his father probably subsists entirely off a microwave. Or charming some dumbfuck into cooking for him. 

The food is good, and Kylo does not fail to notice that Hux ensures Kylo gets the first pick of seconds. “Are you feeding me up?”

“You live a high-risk lifestyle and enjoy jumping off buildings. You need what help you can get.” Hux flicks a strand of gingery hair back into place, his usual careful arrangement coming undone so late in the day. “Besides, you’ve intervened on my behalf innumerable times. A meal seems a fair remuneration.”

“I suppose. Speaking of, though- I know you said you found me on CCTV, but did you also rig that vacuum to explode?”

“Vacuum?” Hux looks genuinely surprised. “Vacuums are not typically explosive, in my experience.”

“Well, this one was. Blew out the wall of the cell I was in.”

“Ah. No, that must have been fortuitous timing. I had just been debating whether I should attempt to go in when you appeared on that balcony.” He smiles thinly. “Sounds like you found a bit of luck.”

Something about that twinges the back of Kylo’s mind, not that he thinks Hux is lying, exactly, there’s just something there…. “So I have all the good luck and yours is all terrible?”

“That must be it. Now come here- give me your wrist, and we’ll see if this works.”

The band Hux encases around his wrist looks like a sleek piece of metal, just a bit thick, with leather coiled around it. “Fashionable.”

“You can hide quite a lot with good fashion.” Hux carefully lifts the little leather bits, revealing slim coils of wire. “Your abilities come with a low-grade frequency, did you know that? Your friend Hope is quite popular on the internet, there’s lots of people who’ve studied her skill set. Entire forums dedicated to analyzing the powers of heroes. This should be sufficient to prevent that frequency from interacting with you physically- kind of like a shield made of radio waves. I don’t know that it will work up close, but if she’s simply looking for you- perhaps it will be enough that she skims past.”

“That’s… really clever.” Kylo turns his wrist, looking at it. No wonder Snoke let Hux negotiate such a vicious contract. The man is a genius. And… thoughtful. Most ordinary people would say Kylo deserves whatever Rey gives to him, because Rey’s “Hope” person is a hero, and Kylo, well. He’s evil. Most definitely evil. That’s a villain’s lot. But Hux has been terribly unbothered about Kylo’s morality the entire time.

He doesn’t say thank you. Villains don’t do that.

But he does wrap his hands around Hux’s sharp cheekbones and pull him closer for a deep kiss. 

“Well,” Hux breathes when they separate, cheeks slightly flushed. “That’s not so bad to come home to.”

Kylo smiles. “Since you offered a place to stay and all.”

“Of course. An equitable trade.”

“Do I ask you about your day now?”

“Ugh.” Hux goes for his wine, of which he seems to have quite a lot. “The usual. Snoke thinks he can micromanage my office but as he has no idea what we actually  _ do _ he’s mostly just getting in our way.”

Kylo lifts a brow. “I thought you respected him?”

“I  _ tolerate _ him. The First Order has access to resources I could never hope to gain as a private citizen. But he’s a nearsighted old fool.”

_ Fool. _ Snoke would rip Hux’s tongue from his mouth if he knew the man called him that. “That’s… you realize that’s dangerous for you to say.”

“You work for him, don’t you?” Hux’s eyes are piercing. Kylo swallows. Snoke has always told all the Knights to deny it. “It’s alright. I suspected he had trade with… some sort of enforcers. And your body armor- I’m pretty sure that’s one of Mitaka’s designs. He works in my division. Made that of layered dense fabric to act as a shield. It was designed for the police, you know, but they couldn’t afford the contract.”

“Oh.” Kylo’s fingers toy subconsciously with the edge of the robe. He shouldn’t have let Hux have his armor. That had been a mistake, hadn’t it? But Hux had already seen his face....

Snoke would have told him to kill Hux. Absolutely and unequivocally. Kill him. 

The Knights of Ren do not leave witnesses.

Why does he want so badly to make an exception, then?

“I should… I should go out tonight, then. If you’re sure this… radio shield thing... works.”

“It does.” Hux’s hand lands on one of his pecs, warm and soft. “But be careful. If she’s close, it probably won’t be enough.”

“Alright.” 

Hux returns his costume- Kylo suspects a bit reluctantly- and Kylo gears up to go resume his schedule of debt collection and intimidation. Part of him still wants to be wary, but another part remains thrilled that he can just- touch Hux. Kiss him. And for whatever reason feel like he’s not taking any risks at all. 

His hand cups Hux’s chin. “I’ll come back here when I’m done.”

“I look forward to it.”


	4. In the Dark You Miss the Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snoke brings Kylo in for a chat, and many secrets are revealed. Also, Hux has Opinions on capitalism.

They find a new kind of routine in their rotating schedules. Kylo brings coffee to Hux on his way back from patrol, Hux makes Kylo breakfast that doubles as his own dinner. Kylo slips a duffel bag of clothes out of his apartment and hangs them up in Hux’s guest room closet. 

One of them usually kisses the other awake. The domesticity of it is nice.

But neither of them call it dating.

Despite doing his job, and doing it mostly efficiently, Snoke must suspect something has changed. Kylo’s not sure what gives him away, whether it’s a subtle change in schedule or if Snoke’s had someone checking his apartment too, but when the message arrives on his phone requesting a meeting, Kylo takes far longer than he should to respond.

 _Yes_ should be the answer. Immediately and without a second thought.

He dithers.

Snoke has a habit of breaking into his head. And, while he doesn’t really want to admit that he’s actually seen Leia and Rey lately, the idea that Snoke might figure out he’s- whatever he’s doing- with Hux… that’s downright dangerous. 

_Would it put him at risk, knowing me?_

_Would Snoke hurt him?_

Snoke messages again, informing him that this an order, not a request. “Shit.”

 _Fuck. Fuck!_ He’s going to have to go in- and from the street, too, otherwise he’ll be coming from Hux’s, and Hux will be at the top of his mind and Snoke will definitely, definitely know.

“Shit balls cock-”

“Kylo.”

The voice comes out of the darkness as he paces across the rooftop, altered in the same way his own helmet changes it. 

The Knights have been dispatched.

“You must come in.”

Though rage fills him- more rage than fear, he doesn’t want to think about the fear- he goes. He knows them, they know him. It’s the sort of fight that could level city blocks. He wouldn’t have cared about that, _before._

But there’s someone living in those city blocks he’d rather not destroy now.

Snoke’s hall is impressive. Kylo has never doubted it is designed to intimidate. The long walk to the desk, accented by art that must be stolen, most of which depict blades, is suggestive. The other Knights peel away as he stalks closer, vanishing into the shadows. He knows most of them will not leave. They’re going to watch, because even though he had mostly claimed his own independence Kylo is one of their own, and anything that happens to him might happen to any of them. Snoke’s personal guards, his red-clad Praetorians, remained at their posts, masked like statues. They were another effort at intimidation, though anyone who knew the meaning of the word would also see them as a sign of how massive Snoke’s ego is. 

“My apprentice.” Snoke turns in his high-backed chair, arms folded on the desk. “I sense a reluctance to be here.”

“It’s not reluctance.” Kylo pushes thoughts of Leia and Rey to the front of his mind. He’d decided that was the best course on the way there- admit his embarrassment for that failure and his capture, and keep Hux out of it. “I have been carrying out my duties, as ordered, barring some… inconveniences.”

“One of your duties is also coming when you are called, Kylo Ren.” Snoke beckons him closer. Kylo can already feel the tendrils of searching power brushing against his mind. His master has a real skill with that sort of thing. Kylo typically has to beat someone a little first before they drop their mental walls enough for him to get in, but Snoke can do it without lifting a finger. “You are… keeping something from me.”

Kylo shifts his weight. It’s what he planned. He can get through this. He’s strong. He is a Knight of Ren. The best of them.

He can handle pulling one over on Snoke.

“I… I had an altercation with the Alliance. It was dealt with. I did not think it required reporting ba-”

“I decide what is important, Kylo Ren.”

The first pull in his mind nearly knocks him to the floor. Snoke can be more delicate when he’s inclined, but this is the pure pain of punishment. Kylo is _meant_ to suffer. He catches himself before his knees give out, staggering but keeping upright. Images flash through his mind and he pushes back, trying to press the ones of Rey and Leia and Poe to the fore. _This. This is what you want. This is all you are looking for-_

“Do not try that with me, you insolent child.”

The pull in his head yanks harder and this time Kylo does fall, grunting. People never realize that memories _hurt_ when they’re dragged out. The human mind isn’t meant to be rearranged like that, yanked and pulled and sorted to someone else’s preferences. 

“You refrained from using lethal force.”

 _Lethal force._ Kylo could cry with relief if he didn’t have to keep the emotion behind his own mental barricades, all of the remaining ones still circled around his memories of Hux. _It’s working._ Snoke thinks it was just Leia and Rey he was hiding. “I attac-”

“Subconsciously or not, you elected to refrain from causing real harm. Your attachments continue to get in your way. I have told you this before. You must eliminate them.”

He presses harder and Kylo’s vision blurs into streaks of white lightning behind his eyelids, an extremely undignified wheeze slipping out between his lips. With pain like that he can’t maintain his barricades, which is the point, it’s why Kylo always leads with punching before he has to press in-

“In fact, your attachments have grown worse, haven’t they? You’ve formed a new one. How touching.” 

_Fuck- don’t- please don’t, he’s mine, he’s mine, you can’t hurt him-_

Snoke releases him and Kylo curls into himself on the floor, just trying to catch his breath, to get his nerves to stop firing false signals of agony through the rest of his spine. “I am surprised at your choice, Kylo Ren. You, with all your skill at learning _secrets,_ and you haven’t pressed him once, have you? You are a waste of my tutelage.” He leans forward, eyes cold and hard and just a little sadistically enthused at how much pain he’s caused Kylo. “Have you deduced he’s been lying to you yet?”

_What?_

“He’s- he’s more honest than-”

“Is he?” 

Snoke rises from his chair, slowly pacing his emaciated form closer. “You are more naive than I believed, Kylo Ren. Developing feelings for Armitage Hux,” Snoke pronounces the name with an open sneer, almost spitting the x. “And you thought you met him by _chance_?”

_But I did. He was just getting coffee. It was a coincidence._

“Armitage Hux has never left a single element of his life to _chance._ He is incapable of it. A useful element, in a subordinate. No matter how much control he believes he has he still. Works. For me.” Snoke’s hand beckons and Kylo is dragged across the floor, slamming into the heavy metal desk. The wind rushes from his lungs. “You have wasted _your_ time, and therefore _my_ time, playing the _hero_ for him. Is that what you think you are, Kylo Ren?”

Snoke’s steps toward him are slow and shaky, a byproduct of old injuries. But he’s never really needed his physical body to cause pain. Kylo has the feeling that he’s being kicked in the ribs, over and over, hard enough that he can’t catch his breath, can’t speak, can’t get his metal guard up enough to _make it stop-_

“Do you imagine yourself as a savior still? You, who spend your nights doing whatever it is I tell you. Gathering information with fists and blood. What, do you like the praise without all the rules your mother gave you?”

Kylo snarls. He _hates_ it when Snoke brings up Leia, and Snoke knows it. 

“You are no better than a stray dog, boy, handing out your trust in exchange for the barest bit of affection. Meanwhile, he’s letting you fool yourself.” Snoke stands over him, looming, the sheer force of his power making him seem so much larger than he is. “Armitage Hux was never in any danger, you besotted idiot.”

“He was,” Kylo chokes out. Sure, some of them weren’t dangerous- coffee is one thing, the inconveniences of paint spilled, but there were others- large things, falling things- “The- the car, at least-”

“The car.” Snoke sneers. “Can’t you see it, Kylo? The boy has played you. The only danger he’s been in is that which he _called_ to himself. Called so _you_ would save him.” He leans closer still, his face expansive, encompassing the whole of Kylo’s vision as his power surges through Kylo’s mind. “Armitage Hux is no ordinary mortal. He’s very much like you.”

The visions surge through him. Armitage’s eyes, looking at the car just before it swerves, almost drawn to him. Armitage walking on his own, casually stepping an inch to the right just before a spear of falling ice plunges into the sidewalk next to him. A younger Armitage, possibly in college, tossing a tiny piece of metal from a window. The vision follows it as it travels, falling three stories before a breeze catches it and blows it back into the building, straight into the path of a bunsen burner. It erupts in a burst of white light, and a cluster of voice burst out in screams-

Above it all, Armitage is smiling.

“He lied to you, Kylo Ren. He hid himself from you. And you, you stupid child, believed him.”

Kylo’s vision comes back to the room and he’s gasping, lying there on the floor. Could that be true? Was Hux....

Is Hux some sort of supervillain?

It’s hard to believe. He has a day job, a busy one- Kylo’s seen him go in- he’s corporate, for fuck’s sake! When would he have the time?

Powers, though. That’s… Kylo hates to admit it, but maybe… maybe Snoke is right about that. His luck is terrible, awful, and dangerous, and maybe that’s his power. Kylo has never met anyone like that- his family is mostly variations on telekinetics, and those with the power to affect the mind have always been the most discussed of all the supers- but… maybe. It could be that no one realizes it’s really a power, and that’s how he stays under the radar.

“And do you know what your precious Hux does with his skills, Kylo Ren?”

His mind is flooded once more, this time with images of wires and explosions, of laughing people stepping onto a private plane that falls from the sky to the sound of echoing screams. 

“He doesn’t use them for me,” Snoke chuckles darkly. “Though I am sure we could have quite teh time together. No, what Hux does with his particular skills, he does for his own pleasure. And you thought you would be his _hero?”_ His grip on Kylo releases, leaving him panting on the floor once more. “A man like him has no need for a hero.”

He’s just getting his lungs inflated again when there’s a sort of sizzling noise somewhere above him.

One of the guards falls, soundless until they hit the floor with a crumple, their armor smoldering softly. Snoke makes a growling sort of snarl, an angry noise Kylo has never heard from him before- perhaps because it’s the first time he’s ever detected a note of surprise in his master’s tone. “Do not let him in here!” he yells to the room, with all its hidden Knights in the shadows, striding toward the center as the red-clad guards fall into a protective circle around him. 

_Him?_

Kylo blinks. _Hux?_ Had Hux really come to save him again?

He forces himself up from the floor and onto one elbow. Hux might have lied to him. But he never hurt Kylo the way Snoke had. He’d helped, even. He’d been- kind.

And no matter what else he’d done, there was never a lie in the kisses they’d exchanged. Not one.

It makes his decision far, far easier. 

He reaches his hand out, building the spiral of red energy that releases like a beam, carving through the steel and concrete of the wall. “Boy!” Snoke shouts at him. “Don’t you run from me.” Both hands extend toward Kylo and he flinches, waiting for the blow-

But instead of lightning, he’s simply pinned and pulled into the air, struggling to breathe. 

“He’ll be dealt with, Kylo Ren, don’t you worry. You, however, still have a role to play. Don’t you want to see it?”

He struggles, kicking uselessly at the air, and his vision blurs-

_Red. Red and death._

Kylo walks through a shattered battlefield. Bodies are scattered around him, bloody and broken, but he marches on, up a street, up to the gleaming tower of the First Order. Snoke stands outside it, hands folded before him. “Don’t you see? There must be violence to bring the change we need, Kylo. And you- _you_ are that violence.” Kylo looks down at his hands. They’re scorched. Bloodied. He’s only seen them like this when he was young, before he could control his energy bursts, when they went… everywhere….

“You will do this, Kylo Ren. You will.”

Snoke holds his hands out, and Kylo turns. A crowd has gathered behind him, bowing and shouting reverence at them. “Mortals will bow to us, Kylo, as it was always meant to be. Those who do not have the gifts we bear must know their place.”

Kylo turns back, his eye drawn over Snoke’s head, to the figures dangling above him. Displayed, like heads on pikes in the days when people still had castles to defend. _Rey. Poe._

_Leia._

“Those that would oppose us will be eliminated.”

Kylo grits his teeth. _No._ Somewhere outside the vision, his own hand lifts. The beam centers. He can still make a door, even if he cannot see. 

_Make a door. Go through it._

_Find Hux._

The vision begins to flicker. Snoke glares. “Do not push me out, Kylo Ren. You are but a child compared to my power.” His hand raises, and even pushing back, trying with everything he has to resist, Kylo can feel the pressure pulling him down and crushing him. “You do not have the strength-”

The vision shatters. Kylo drops to the floor, catching himself on his knees, looking up in surprise as Snoke makes a surprised, pained noise, and stumbles back. He glances over his shoulder. There, beside the hole he’d been making, is Hux, holding what looks like a large black shield. It’s smoking, red- Kylo’s beam must have hit it- and turned…. 

Kylo looks the other way. Snoke has been knocked to the floor, the clear scorching signs of Kylo’s energy blast sizzling off his clothes.

“Kylo! Let’s go!”

He peels himself off the floor and runs. With the partial hole he’d made he forces the remaining metal to _bend,_ making a path. Hux follows him as there’s a crackle of energy behind them- the full force of Snoke’s own energy manifesting. 

“Do you have a-”

“Jump!” Hux pulls him. Through a window. _Holy fuck._

Glass shatters as they slam through. Hux spins his shield so he’s riding it like a surfboard. Kylo grasps a handful of his jacket, mentally trying to slow their descent. He still slams ungracefully into a dumpster.

Hux, on the other hand, skids on his shield right off the lid, landing cat-like beside his waiting motorcycle and swinging the shield to his back. “Get on!”

He does, scrambling to get behind Hux as the bike starts, the familiar scent of motor oil and leather feeling almost comfortable. _Except Snoke was telling the truth, wasn’t he?_

_You lied. You didn’t tell me._

It weighs on his heart as they fly into the darkness, the engine too loud to ask too many questions. But he’d seen it. No one could predict a drop like that, no one could time a landing that perfectly. Hux has- something. Some manner of power. 

_Why didn’t you tell me?_

Did he think Kylo’s ego was so fragile that he wouldn’t want the competition? 

They’re both quiet when they end up in a dark, silent garage, somewhere in the outskirts. Without the hum of the engine, the quiet feels strangely close, like it’s encroaching on them, ready to attack. “Were you- how much did you hear?”

“Most.” Hux’s voice is soft. 

“He’s- he’s right, isn’t he? You’re- you have- something. Like me. Something different.”

Hux sighs, leaning against the motorcycle. “Yes.”

“And the- you… you hurt people.”

Leather-clad arms fold defensively across Hux’s chest. “That isn’t how I see it.”

“Explain it, then!” Kylo feels as though his heart is trying to leap through his throat. He shouldn’t care- he’d promised himself, when he switched sides, that he was _done_ caring. But he’d thought- for whatever stupid reason- he’d _thought_ Hux might be… better than him. Maybe even _good._ “What are you- what are you doing? Are you- have you killed people, Hux?”

“Would it better if I haven’t?” Hux lifts a coppery brow, glaring back. “You bludgeon people for a living, Kylo. Do you honestly believe you have the moral high ground when you merely put them in the hospital instead of in the ground? You think you’re giving them some sort of fighting chance because they know you’re coming? Spare me.” 

He marches off toward a door, leaving Kylo to sputter and chase after him. “At least tell me _why_ , then, Hux. You hate Snoke! You know that he’s- like he is- and you still work for-”

“Not for that.” Hux’s voice is sharp, crisp and deadly. “I work- worked, now, probably- for him for equipment and access. I had a suspicion… I thought there was a chance he knew about my gifts, but I took precautions. My… other activities were meant to be a secret.” He steps into an elevator, forcing Kylo to chase him before the doors close, and prods a button with excessive force. “I hadn’t- I would had preferred for you not to know about this work. It is necessary, but… necessary things are not always pretty.”

“Necessary? Hux- if you’re a supervillain-”

“I am _not_ one of you costumed idiots,” Hux growls at him. “I am trying to _save_ people. Real people. People that those fools obsessed with looking for a source of evil to punch never think twice about.”

“You think I’m an idiot?” Kylo’s voice is soft. He can feel his heart straining to the point of breaking. _Is this who you’ve been the whole time?_ It’s hard to believe. Hux has been kind, he took Kylo in….

When he looks up, Hux’s pale blue eyes look a little chagrined. “Well. Maybe not you. You are- you’re different. I don’t think you realize it, but you are.”

The elevator lets out somewhere far enough below ground that Kylo’s ears have popped. It opens into an expansive room, full of computer screens, surveillance and the like, lab equipment and wires, chemicals and books. 

Kylo blinks. 

“I’m- sorry, were you arguing that you aren’t a supervillain when you have an actual _lair?_ ”

Hux rolls his eyes. “A secure location is necessary for my work, it’s not-”

“It’s one hundred percent a lair. Definitely. I have never been in a lair-i-er lair. It’s a lair.”

They stare at each other. Hux’s lips purse. “Fine. I will make a concession on the lair. But it’s a- lair of necessity. Not a villain lair.”

“Sure. Alright. And what’s the necessity again?”

Hux sighs. “What’s your view on evil, Kylo?”

“Evil?” Kylo shrugs. “I mean, it exists, sure-”

“I mean the source of it. You deal with villains- people who actually call themselves villains- all the time. What’s their justification for why they do evil?”

Kylo thinks. He knows why he did things- it was because Snoke asked, and Kylo usually felt better, sort of, after he’d pounded the shit out of someone, and taking orders from Snoke had seemed like a good idea when he’d run off from Leia’s ivory tower of goodness and joy and whatever else she was willing to offer as long as everyone lived within her tight little box of acceptable behavior. But he’d never really cared too much why _Snoke_ behaved the way he did. “Power? Control?”

“And what is the source of all power on earth?”

“Uh….”

Hux pulls his wallet out and tosses a few fives and tens to the table. “It’s money, always. Sure you can say it’s who has the biggest army, who has the most guns, who controls the access to medicine and food and water. But the person at the top, the person who has those things, got it because they have an absolute fuckton of money.”

“Okay.” Sure, Kylo can see that. He’d heard his mother talk about it, sort of- that’s why people like her work so hard to bring in donors to their causes. They’re convincing the people who have the most money to spend it on things that will actually help people and not, like, their fourth yacht. “And money is… evil.”

“Currency is itself neutral, which is funny, really- it only has any value at all because we’ve all agreed as a society to say so. But its use can be evil. How many billionaires are sitting on an amount of money they can never hope to spend while refusing to pay their employees anything higher than minimum wage? Who is paying for a football team when they could open a research lab and cure cancer? Who refuses to change to climate-friendy production because it will bring down their profit margins?” His face changes as he speaks into a sort of rabid intensity Kylo hasn’t seen before. “They won’t change. None of them. So they must be forced.”

Kylo chews the inside of his lip. “Snoke showed me a plane crash. That was….”

“A test, of sorts. I thought death might be the best answer when I was younger, cutting off the head of the snake, as it were, but. In the end it did not really make a dent.” His eyes are cold, but there’s a heat in them too. A look that said even if it didn’t work, he certainly wasn’t sorry about it. “An arms dealer who deserved it, I assure you.”

There’s a ripple in that, some sort of twinge that sets off Kylo’s mental sense for lies and subterfuge. Not quite a lie, not the sort of thing he hears from people who’d been avoiding paying Snoke, but…. 

He studies Hux’s face, the lines of his cheekbones, the subtle pout of his jaw. “True, but… it was personal, too, wasn’t it?”

Hux sneers. “Don’t use that nonsense on me.”

Kylo presses on. “How personal?” If it was someone who’d hurt Hux, who’d done something- Kylo would understand that. Hux would have been defending himself. But Hux’s face just freezes into a sort of chilly mask of indifference, and Kylo can feel it as the tiny thread he’d connected to is sharply cut. He won’t be able to tell anything deeper without prying, and he won’t- can’t- do that to Hux.

Those cool pale eyes are distant, however. “My father,” he says simply, turning to march off to a broad display of screens, cameras pointed at all sorts of offices.

It feels like he’s been kicked. _His father?_ Kylo doesn’t care too much for Han, sure, but he wouldn’t- he probably wouldn’t-

 _How bad would it have to be to go there?_ Hux had called him an arms dealer, and that business deserved its reputation for producing amoral, infamously brutal assholes.

_Well. Shit._

He swallows, walking slowly after Hux, feeling a bit like he’s treading on ice without knowing if it’s cracking beneath him. “So you have a plan to… force that sort of change, yeah?”

Hux clears his throat. “Quite. It’s- to put it simply, it’s a way to use the security equipment I developed to execute a simultaneous series of transfers. Their money would be ripped away from them, siphoned through overseas accounts that our government will not be able to trace, and then rerouted back into places that need it. Small transfers, to fly under the radar, and so many of them that they would be impossible to chase down. Fifty dollars at a time to anyone with a balance below a certain amount- at least with the banks that I could get my equipment into. I’m not omnipotent, sadly, but it will be as many as possible. It will take a little time, but I can rebalance things. Redistribute. The highest echelon of the rich are sitting on funds they would never even notice losing, but I want them to _feel it_. People who act like bothering to pay the minimum wage is something they should be thanked for deserve to suffer.”

 _Wow._ Kylo’s never been terribly political- and alright, sure, that might be sort of his rebellion against Leia, because god knows she would be nodding along to this and taking notes. _Not sure she’d approve of the methods, but the message… yeah._

He scruffs his hair. “That sounds complicated.”

Those cool blue eyes swing back to him, studying him intently. Kylo has the sense Hux is trying to work out if he’s just trying to placate him or not, and eventually he just purses his lips and nods. “It is.”

“Okay.” Kylo chews his lip. “Snoke also showed me… what he wants. The future he wants to create. You- I’m sure you don’t-”

“I am aware he is not a man to take likely.” Hux sighs. “But no, I never gathered the specifics. I inferred a few things.”

“He wants to… destroy things. Subjugate people. Kill… kill a lot of people.” Kylo gazes at the floor. “He thinks I’m going to… help him. He showed it to me, and in the vision I’d- I’d done all that for him.” That vision… it frightened him more than he’d like to admit. _I couldn’t do that._

_Could I?_

A hand clasps his shoulder. Hux’s brow is furrowed. “You won’t. You’re a good person, Kylo.”

“I’m- we’re villains, Hux. I’m not sure _good_ is something we’re….”

“ _Villains,_ ” Hux scoffs. “Such a dramatic term. What do you call all the times you rescued me?”

Kylo sighs. “They weren’t rescues at all, apparently, so-”

“But you thought they were. You thought you were saving me.” Hux’s hand slides down and takes his, winding their fingers together. “So. You’re a villain who sometimes does good. I am planning to commit the largest scale act of theft ever attempted to do a bit of good.” His hand squeezes. “Maybe the labels don’t really apply.” 

Kylo chews the inside of his lip. “Did you… did you know about me? Like he said?”

“Yes.” Hux doesn’t meet his eye. “The armor… I told you I recognized it, but I’d seen you far before that. It took me longer to deduce who you likely were, but….” His grin cants, wry and self-deprecating. “I’m clever. I like to know things.”

“And?”

“And I wanted to meet you. To see if you were everything they said of Snoke’s enforcer.” His eyes flick up. “You aren’t, by the way.”

“I’m not?”

“No. You’re very different, Kylo.” Kylo watches as he runs his tongue over his teeth, the silence between them feeling… expansive. Hux breaks it with an inhale that sounds almost shaky. “The first time we met, I didn’t influence that.”

“The… the coffee?”

Hux’s expression is complicated as he nods. “I could have easily altered it, but honestly, I knew you were out there. I was trying to figure out if you were actually watching me, because you didn’t have any reason to know who I was and I was worried you already knew, somehow, and I wasn’t paying too much attention to anything else. The waitress was, for once… just clumsy.” His face softens. “You… surprised me.”

“Oh.” Kylo feels something unwind in his chest. He leans foreward, resting his head on Hux’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have- I do trust you, you know.”

He feels the shift in Hux’s lungs as he huffs. “You probably shouldn’t.”

“Maybe not. But I do anyway.” Kylo releases Hux’s hands to wrap his arms around that skinny back and pull Hux closer. “It was because you were cute.”

“What?”

“I was watching because you were cute. You are. Cute.”

Hux’s lips brush into his hair, his arms wrapping around Kylo’s shoulders. “ _Cute._ Well, I was right.”

“Hm?”

“You are an idiot.”

Kylo swats at his ass with a laugh that turns into a hiss as he feels something pull in his shoulder.

Hux’s brow lifts. “He did a number on you, didn’t he? I should have asked- are you injured?”

“I dunno. Used to getting hit, I suppose.” Kylo inventories himself. He feels bruised, sure, but nothing feels more busted up than it usually is after a rough night out. 

“Well, sit down. Let me have a look, just in case.”

Hux is applying some sort of cream to one of his worst bruises when a pinging alarm begins to sound from one of the computers. Brow furrowed, he marches over and clicks through, cursing in escalating intensity as he flicks through several screens of data that Kylo has no hope of understanding. “What’s wrong?”

“Snoke’s gotten into my systems at the apartment. He’s- shit.” Kylo didn’t think his face could go whiter, but it’s so blanched now that he might blend in with snow. “He’s ripped out my power dampeners.”

“What’s that?”

“The tech I use to keep other powered people out. It’s localized, and I always had it on a low setting, just enough to keep out of view of any watching eyes, but- if he figures out how to boost the signal, he could depower anyone who attacks him. Or even anyone within a certain range of him.”

Kylo inhales. “That’s how he’ll do it. That’s how he’ll kill all of them.”

“Fuck.” Hux’s hands curl into fists, glaring at the screens. “That’s _mine!_ It’s not meant for- _fuck.”_

“Alright, alright, so- he’s doing this now, yeah? How long will it take him to repurpose it?”

“I’m not sure, I don’t know who he’d have to work on it.” Hux runs a hand through his hair, his normally perfectly smooth coif ruffling and falling into his eyes. “If he forces a team from the office to do it, it could be fast. They’re not stupid, and they’re all terrified of him, Mitaka especially. They’ll cave.” He sighs, eyes narrowing. Kylo can almost feel him thinking and calculating. “We’ll need to draw him out. Can’t fight him on his home turf. We need him where we have a better chance of taking those dampeners out before he can use them.”

“Okay. Somewhere big and unpopulated. Right.” Kylo runs through the options in his head. Stadiums, parks…. “Does the- dampener thing- does that have any effect on non-powered people?”

“No. I mean, I haven’t specifically tested it like that, but it shouldn’t.”

“Huh.” _Well, fuck. They did say they wanted me back in the fold…._ “So, this might sound stupid, but… I think I have an idea.”


	5. Bait the Hook and Let Fly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final confrontation between good, evil, and... whatever Kylo is now.

Somewhat predictably, Hux hadn’t been impressed. “They abducted you, you realize. How do you know you won’t end right back up in a cell with me this time? I don’t think they’d let you walk out a second time.”

“Because right now, I am not the bigger problem. If there’s one thing people like them can be counted on for, it’s going after whatever the greatest evil in the room is.”

“Fine, then how do you know they won’t come after  _ me?” _

Kylo takes Hux’s shoulders and kisses his cheek, which elicits a noise that makes Kylo think Hux believes he’s being patronized. “They have no idea who you are, and even if they do, you’re still not Snoke. Besides, your plan is secret, isn’t it? Your worst public offense is working for Snoke, and god knows my mother loves a good redemption. She might even think you’re a good influence.”

Hux huffs. “Fine, but I’m not going to like it.”

“You just need to tolerate it. Poe’s going to be keeping an eye on you all, alright?”

“The one in the metal suit.”

“Right. He doesn’t actually have any powers, so if the dampeners hit-”

“He won’t be compromised, I understand. It is my equipment in play, after all.” He sighs. “I will not play nice, either.”

“Fine.” Kylo tips Hux’s chin up, and kisses along his jaw. “But I would like you to be wary. If Poe tells you all to run-”

“Yes, yes, fine.” Hux swats at him, but there’s no malice in it and no real effort to keep Kylo from affectionately nuzzling into his throat. “And the same to you while you’re being  _ bait _ .”

“I’ll have my eye on you.”

“That’s what I’m worried about, oh Master of the Easily Distracted.”

They’re interrupted by the sound of a metal door scraping, and the various footfalls as Leia walks in, flanked by Poe and Rey. “Alright,” she says, one eyebrow pointedly raised at them. “You said you had something urgent to discuss, and we’ve brought our gear, as agreed. Who’s this?”

“This is Hux. He’s with me.” Kylo inhales, steeling himself and straightening his back. “I’ve learned something about Snoke, and we’re going to need to deal with it today.”

“We?” Rey says with a sarcastic edge. 

“Yeah. Much as I don’t like the idea.” Kylo gestures from them toward the table where he and Hux have laid out their plans. “We.”

***

The mood in the aircraft hanger is uneasy. 

Holdo’s gotten them in- she and Leia have contacts everywhere, of course, but apparently she usually keeps a small plane here that she’s  _ “teaching Poe to fly in,”  _ which made Poe blush for reasons Kylo is not going to think about. They’ve cleared it out for this, making a nice big open space without much to totally destroy. 

Now they just have to toss out the bait.

“I really am sorry about knocking you out,” Rey says earnestly as they fly a ways over the hanger, high above the others. From here, Kylo can see his mother and Hux eyeing each other warily from opposite sides of the hanger. Poe is hovering around Hux, probably still asking a shitton of questions about the tech Hux has brought with him, especially his rather ominous shield, and Hux has countered by interrogating Poe at length about the specific parameters of his suit. They’re both trying not to actually answer any questions while still sounding like the smartest boy in the room and Kylo is trying not to feel slightly jealous that they can talk about things like voltage and frequency and trans-dermal pulses without dumbing it down for an idiot like him.

_ It’ll help in the end, though. When we bring them here. _

“Rey, you’re a superhero. Don’t lie in your apologies.”

She grins from behind her Hope mask, the perfect pristine image of the people’s champion. He has to give her credit. The look works for her, mask and all, a polar opposite to his dark and terrifying ensemble. “Fair enough. Are you ready?”

“Yup. On three. One, two-”

The three is drowned out by a concussive sound burst as he unleashes the full onslaught of his red energy into the air, at an angle over Rey’s head. He’s not trying to kill her, after all. Not this time. 

Hers takes longer to build up. Energy production is more of a minor thing for her, not something she has the skill to pull out on short notice in a fight, but if she has time to really concentrate on it without anyone trying to punch her….

A blue spark starts from her chest and expands, bursting upward and slamming into the red light. Together they expand further, sending a sonic wave ripping through the air with a loud, thunderous crack. It’s deafening enough that it should be picked up by any sensor in the city, along with the massive shift in energy that every news station now carries a monitor for- it’s a sure sign that someone with powers is fighting. 

For emphasis, Kylo fires off a few more bolts after, just to add to the effect of anyone trying to turn a distant camera their way.

“Do you think that’s enough?” she asks, a trace of nervousness in her voice that only someone who’d known her since she was a kid would be able to detect. 

“Hopefully. He wants me, he wants you out of the way. Should be tempting enough.” They fly back down, hovering over the others. “Alright, any sign of company?”

Hux and Poe both hover over a set of computers, Holdo a half-step behind them. “Give it a minute,” Hux grumbles. 

A minute passes. Another. 

Kylo ignores it when his mother glares at him from the floor, then, pursing her lips, slowly floats up beside him. It takes her quite a lot of concentration to manage flight- Kylo’s been lucky with that, it came to him pretty easily, though Luke always told him he wasn’t so much  _ flying _ as lifting himself with his mind. Maybe Leia is the same way. “Ben. I hope you understand that- we were trying to help.”

“For the  _ good guys _ , you lot are surprisingly okay with kidnapping.”

“ _ Ben,” _ she says sharply. “You know he’s evil. You have a chance now- you’re fighting with us, and with Snoke out of the way-”

“I don’t want to join your merry little band, mom. I don’t- I’m helping out with this, just this, and then I need you to just let me go be myself, alright?”

She watches him, tongue running over her teeth. “Alright. But our door is open. Whenever you need it.” Her eyes drift down, eyeing Hux skeptically. “For whatever reason.”

He grits his teeth. The teenager in him still wants to snark and fight and yell until she understands that he’s  _ different _ , damn it, but… he can’t be that person anymore. That’s the idiot to went right from her to Snoke. If he wants to finally, finally get out, to finally be his own damn person…. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

A vaguely surprised look crosses her face. “Well. Good. Okay.” Looking back at him like he may possibly have been taken over by aliens, she gently floats back down. 

_ Shit. If I’d known politeness would get her off my back I might’ve saved myself a ton of trouble. _

“Eyes up, everyone.” Hux calls over the comms from the ground. “They’re on their way. I don’t see Snoke on my systems, but the Knights and his guards are enroute for sure.”

“He might be hiding himself,” Poe replies. It’s something they’d been discussing, once Hux opened up a little about his technology- Snoke may have also discerned its use for hiding oneself from anyone with the usual mental ability to sense someone coming. 

“We have to assume he is. In the meantime- positions, please.”

Kylo glances at Rey as they both slide into battle-ready stances honed from years and years of muscle memory. “Ready?”

“Yep. Let’s do it.”

They don’t have to wait long. 

The Praetorians, Snoke’s internal enforcers, scream toward the hanger on augmented jet packs, red armor bright against the afternoon sun. He and Rey pull higher into their view, feigning a struggle. Beneath them, Poe closes his enormous metal mask and aims spiralling orange cannon upward. As soon as the Praetorians are in his view, his voice comes in through the tiny comm in Kylo’s ear.

“Fire in the hole.”

Only a brief whirring sound announces the incoming blow. It bursts upward, shattering the armor of the center three guards and scattering the rest. Those that aren’t sent plummeting downward draw their weapons, all a mix of scalding laser-augmented devices built for the express purpose of putting down anyone with powers who decided to take on Snoke. 

Hux’s voice chirps in his ear. “Kylo, I’m picking up the frequencies for the dampeners coming in, but it’s not with the Praetorians. You and Rey must get out of the air now, or when they get here you’re both going to drop.”

Kylo curses under his breath, exchanging a glance with Rey before needing to dodge as a spike of red laser swoops down between them. “It must be with the Knights!” he shouts into the comm, not caring that he can almost hear Poe wince at his volume. 

He spins, tearing another jetpack off a guard as Rey engages another, phasing back and forth and confusing the red-clad fool into firing at his allies. The others dip, heading in the direction of Poe and Hux, but Kylo can’t see any of the Knights from the air. “Hux, you have inbound, and wherever the Knights are, I can’t see them!”

“We noticed,” Hux says tersely. There’s a burst of energy that must be Poe shooting upward again, and other wave of purple behind it- Holdo, probably, but Kylo doesn’t have time to analyze it and finally figure out what it is exactly she can do. Hux is keeping his eyes fixed on the screens, idly stepping out of the way as chunks of metal drop around him without bothering to glance upward. A shimmering pale blue shield rises around them as Leia steps closer, keeping the debris from the screens and forcing one of the Praetorians to slam against it like a bug against a windshield.

Kylo feels it when his ability to keep himself in the air begins to waver. He snatches the jetpack he’d torn off the guard and clings to it just as a subsonic pulse ripples through the air. It nearly makes him nauseous to have his abilities so forcefully… turned off, like a part of him has suddenly shut down without warning. 

Fifteen feet away, Rey drops like a stone, having put her fist through the closest guard’s flight support. “Rey!”

“Don’t worry,” a calm female voice comes through the radio as a whine announces a figure rising like a bullet from the ground on the other side of the airfield and shooting across toward Rey. “Poe asked for extra backup.”

Metal wings carry the figure right under Rey, and as he spins and catches her he lifts a hand in a wave toward Kylo. A smile twitches across his lips. Finn’s been fighting for a spot on Leia’s team for years, ever since he figured out Rey’s identity, but without powers of his own or Poe’s access to limitless money and several engineering degrees he hadn’t ever been given a real shot. “Got her!”

“Good job, Finn!” Poe calls enthusiastically. “Rose, you picking up anything from the dampeners on the backup trackers?”

“Negative, but there’s a ton of interference. If they’re here they’re jamming us.” Kylo knows her voice- Rose had been top of all their classes back in high school, and it didn’t surprise him at all to see it was probably her hand behind a lot of Poe’s more complicated gear. Poe might be able to make a lot of it himself, but that massive suit would’ve taken a second engineer who actually has the patience to do the work, and it certainly wouldn’t hurt if it was also someone who can weld a hell of a lot better than he ever could.

“Kylo, get out of the air.” Hux’s voice comes through in his ear, tight but calm. 

Kylo juggles the jetpack, trying to aim it in a way that won’t get him burned.  _ How the fuck do they steer these things? _ Maybe there’d been a separate directional control, cause this thing doesn’t seem to want to do anything other than go up. “I’m working on it!”

“Work fast, there’s-” 

Below him, concrete erupts. Red and black rise out of the ground, like demons coming out of hell full of light and smoke and thunder.  _ They fucking used the sewers.  _ It’s such a classic villain cliche that Kylo almost feels embarrassed for them, except that it fucking worked, and some of them are using the same laser-powered weapons as Snoke’s personal guards.

His mother’s shield flickers and fades. 

_ The dampeners. Shit.  _ The range is larger than he’d thought. He’d hoped if they went after him and Rey everyone on the ground would have more time- “Get out of there, all of you! Get on the airfield!”

Voices collide over the comms as chaos breaks out entirely. Finn is shouting, Poe is yelling orders. Somewhere in there he can hear Holdo say she’s got Leia and they’re running for the tarmac.

He can’t hear Hux, though.

“Hux? Are you alright?” His weight shifts on the jetpack, still slowly spinning it until he can get what’s left of the straps over one shoulder. He’s too broad and it won’t fit him, not properly, but at least this way he can push for  _ down.  _ Gliding toward the smoke, he loses the ability to see the closer he gets.

_ Alright. Can’t see. Can’t reach out and sense. _

_ Gotta do this the old-fashioned way. _

Kylo’s dad isn’t powered. He’d been back and forth a lot- Han and Leia were never that compatible, not for the long-term, and Han took a lot of jobs that kept him on the go. Or on the run, depending on who was asking. But when he’d been around, and Kylo was still young enough to give a shit, he’d asked what Han’s power was. “ _ I’m good at a lot of things, kid. Getting out when I need to. Reading a person. Talking. But none of that’s from powers. That’s your mom. You want ordinary shit, you talk to me, okay?” _

So Kylo closes his eyes and does what Han told him to do when he was explaining how to read a room.  _ First, assume your eyes are gonna lie. Anyone can look like anything. Clothes, whatever. All an illusion. Take a breath and listen. _ Kylo inhales, loud in his own helmet, and boosts the audio input coming in through it. There’s sparks and flame, sizzling on metal. Steam- probably a burst pipe, somewhere in the ceiling. 

Breathing. Not through a mask, which makes it more likely to belong to Hux. 

His eyes open. 

Boots run toward him, accompanied by the sound of a laser-powered weapon cutting through the air, and Kylo bends, getting low to the ground and using the full force of his weight to punch up, straight at the gap in the armor right at the inside of the hip. As Han told him once, he’s never needed his powers to know how to hit. It stings his hand but he does meet cloth and softer, squisher bits below. A dirty move, maybe, but worth it, as the Knight crumples, their mask muffling the sound of open shouting. 

He charges forward, racing for that soft breathing sound he’d heard before-

And there’s Hux, a wide, monstrous looking gun pressed against his cheek, held securely by one of Kylo’s masked Knights. “Kylo Ren,” they say through their own voice-adjuster. “Give yourself up. Master Snoke can still make use of you. You need not perish with all this… filth.”

Hux’s face is bruised, there’s a thin trickle of blood gliding over one of his high, pale cheekbones. Kylo feels his heart tighten. “Let him go.”

“No.” The knight pulls Hux closer. “Perhaps if you see him perish, you’ll remember where your loyalties-” 

Kylo moves without thinking. 

He reaches, lunging, not even caring that he doesn’t have his powers, that he’s about to shove his hand into the way of a bullet- and that’s if he’s  _ lucky _ , some of the guns Snoke’s people use shoot things a lot worse than a regular bullet. He can feel the urge within him welling anyway, his body pushing to lash out with its mental powers and hitting a block-

The bracelet Hux gave him whirs quietly, a thin band in the center spinning delicately. He can only see it from the corner of his eye, everything for a second seeming like it’s moving in slow motion. 

It’s like a dam breaking.

His powers rip out of him, pushing, controlling, driving for the Knight who’s got Hux in his clutches. The gun yanks itself into the air and hurls away, vanishing into the smoke. Even Hux himself is pulled out of the man’s grasp as Kylo screams, diving forward and closing his fist as all his power circles.

In the end he doesn’t need to worry about reaching the fool with his fists.

The energy swirls around him and the Knight  _ crumples _ , pulled into himself and twisted like a discarded piece of paper. Kylo flicks his wrist and he’s tossed away, slamming into a wall and vanishing into the grey swirl of ash. 

He turns to find Hux gently floating beside him, looking somewhat bemused and still, as always, a touch irritated. “You can put me down now.”

“Oh.” Kylo blinks. He normally has to work a lot harder than that to lift someone else, but he’s levitating Hux without even thinking about it. It’s almost hard to focus on how to set Hux down gently, actually- like there’s too much energy, the same way he feels when he tries to do something small and delicate with his stupid too-big hands. “What did you- did you do something with the bracelet thingy?”

“I told you about frequency before- you’re… more or less broadcasting on several, right now.” Hux shrugs, looking at his wrist, his thinner fingers wrapping about Kylo’s arm. They feel warm and comforting, like they’re supposed to be there. “I had an idea to- build a sort of amplifier in. I didn’t think you’d need it, it was just an opportunity to test it, but-” Hux’s thin smile quirks up, wry as his eyes meet Kylo’s. “I’ve always been lucky.”

There’s a crashing noise as the outline of Poe’s massive iron suit charges through the smoke, followed closely by another even larger one in silver and a speeding shape that must be Finn. Poe’s voice crackles onto the comms. “Don’t worry, superheroes, us normal folk will take care of the dampeners.” 

The huge suit behind his punches down into the gap the Knights rose up through, dropping out of view. “The power source is probably down here,” Rose says calmly, the sound of whirring gears creaking into her comm. “I’ll get that.”

“We’re out of range of them.” Holdo’s voice is staticy, like there’s something interfering with the signal. “Powers are working out here. That probably means-”

She breaks off, sudden and sharp. Poe’s the next to come through. “Holdo?”

“Stay on the dampeners,” Kylo says, glancing at Hux as they both start to run outside. “We’ll go back up the good guys.”

“The good guys?” Hux pants as he jogs beside Kylo.

“Well. The good girls. Ladies. Whatever.”

Finn must have dropped Rey off near Leia, and with his abilities amplified Kylo can sense them now, their- whatever Hux called it, their  _ frequencies _ \- reading out to him like he’s catching it on a mental radar. He beelines toward them. There’s a third sensation there as well that must be Holdo, but it’s weaker. He has the feeling she’s injured. 

They’re out there, on the far side of a private plane. Holdo’s down, wounded and bleeding, and Leia’s kneeling over her keeping a shield above them both, glowing powerfully as lines descend from it down into Holdo’s limp form, slowly healing her. His mother looks furious. If she had more offensive capabilities Kylo has no doubt she’d consider taking the fight to Snoke- but then again Leia’s never wanted to leave anyone behind if she could keep them from suffering, and she’s always been better suited to defense.

“She’s up there!” Leia shouts at them, nodding upward.

Kylo reaches out a hand and  _ pulls _ as he jumps upward, levitating Hux up with him. It feels so much easier now, so  _ right, _ like every move is coming naturally. Rey is a speck above them, and he can see her moving, her pale white-blue glow parrying bolts of electricity coming from somewhere even further up.

_ Snoke. _

For some reason- probably another piece of Hux’s tech at work- he can’t  _ feel  _ Snoke like he can feel the others. But he can see him, high in the air, gold from his stupid ostentatious outfit glittering in the light.

“Kylo Ren.” The voice echoes not in the air, but in his mind, painful and too-close. He can resist it, however, with just a wince. “I am so glad you could join us. I realize you thought this would be the way to defend your friends, but… they’re still all so nicely gathered up for me. Like sheep to the slaughter, even if you all imagine yourselves wolves.”

Hux’s hand reaches out and squeezes his arm as they arc upward. There’s something in his eyes, something- worried, but supportive.  _ Can he hear it too? _

Kylo lets heat pool in his hand as he concentrates, sending a wide burst of red energy upward. Lightning crackles down to meet it. Rey’s blue joins him, but it’s still not enough to break through the sort of electrical barricade Snoke’s made around himself. “Get me close,” Hux breathes in his ear. “I can try something.” 

“You’ll get fried!”

“Maybe, but it’s that or he burns all of us. Look!” Hux points upward, where a swirling cloud is forming over Snoke, the lightning rippling through it. “If he can charge that and it comes down, he’ll get everyone on the ground. It won’t matter if they’re powered or not.”

“Shit.” 

“Toss me to Rey.”

“What?”

“Stop levitating me and  _ throw _ , I can’t get momentum if you’re controlling it.”

Kylo blinks. He can’t send Hux up there without the ability to fly. What if he loses track, what if Hux falls-

Hux grasps his face and pulls him forward kissing him once, hard, the glow of Kylo’s red energy flickering like fire through his hair. “Trust me. I’m lucky, alright. Throw me!”

He starts to spin, whipping Hux in a circle. “Don’t get hurt, alright? Rey!” he calls as he lets go. “Catch!”

Hux rises, clamping on to Rey’s arm as he crashes into her. Kylo can’t hear what he says to her as he pushes upward, trying to increase the strength of his energy beams and feeling the strain of it even with whatever it is Hux did to him. There’s still a chance- if he can break through Snoke’s shield-

A flash of white from Rey pushes Hux up further still, that black shield of his aimed square at the storm. Kylo can see a ripple of something in the shield, like panels moving, and little technical lights clicking on and flashing at once. A burst resonates out of him, small and contained, just a push around Hux’s shield as he meets the lightning. One of the beam arcs down into him, and Kylo can tell it hurts, he can see Hux’s lips move even if he can’t hear the scream- 

But the lightning all pulls toward him, catching onto Hux’s forearm and circling, like he’s conducting it.

Kylo feels it channel out, chaining from Hux to him, to Rey- the amplification he felt before escalates. He can feel  _ everything.  _ Every atom around him. Every slight shift in the air. And it all feels… so small. So slow. His eyes turn to Rey. She must feel it as well, as her hands burst with pale electricity, her eyes turn white with the glow of it. The both gaze upward and unleash, not simply beams of laser-like energy but targeted paths, catching the lightning itself and stealing it, adding it to their own force.

And suddenly, there’s an opening in the barrier. 

Kylo and Rey burst up as one, red and that pale blue swirling together as they both must sense it, each of them punching through the rapidly collapsing barrier and hitting as hard as they can with the full force of both of their skills. The lightning shrinks inward until it’s only around Snoke himself, just an inch away from him, his hands shaking as he tries to hold them off. “I don’t care for murder,” Rey growls, “but I am willing to make an exception.”

Kylo smiles. “That’s more than fine with me.” 

Snoke is screaming at them, lightning bursting down and trying so hard to keep them from his frail, sickly body- but it’s not enough. The light rips through him, atomizing him in the air.

For a brief moment, Kylo feels relieved. Then he looks down. “Hux!” Hux is falling, and quickly- but he has his arms out, and he’s gliding toward the wood at the end of the tarmac on the power of some slim black bands of fabric spanning his arms to his back like small wings. It still looks too fast, there’s no way he’ll hit the ground at that speed without breaking something.

“Rey, check on the others, alright? I’m going to get him.”

She nods, flying off at speed as Kylo tears the other way. By the time he reaches the wood, Hux is nowhere to be seen… until he catches sight of one tall, black-glad ginger, dangling from a tree branch by a strip of fabric that hardly looks like it should support his weight. “I told you. I’m lucky.”

“Sure you are.” Kylo reaches up with one hand to carve through the fabric… but his energy won’t come. 

“Sorry about that. I, um. You might both be temporarily, uh. Depowered. For a bit.”

“What?”

“It’s a side effect of- you know what, don’t worry about the specifics, but it’s like a battery, more or less. You’ve been drained, but you will recharge, I promise. It just might take a bit.” Hux has the grace to look a little but abashed, even dangling from a tree. “I thought- well, I was worried if I told you beforehand, you wouldn’t want to-”

“Is that what- Are you depowered too?”

“Mmm. Possibly. Mostly. This,” he gestures upward to the tiny band of fabric supporting him, “might be the last of it for a while. But it’s alright.”

Kylo jumps, catching the branch and lowering Hux enough to the ground that he can safely be detached. “How’s that? We’re both- we’re supervillains without powers, Hux, and we just killed my boss. We’ll both get arrested in a week- and that’s assuming Rey doesn’t also want to kill either of us when she realizes she’s been tapped out too-”

“We can lay low for a while. Go away together, if you like. Or sit in my  _ lair _ and watch a few movies.” His hands wrap around Kylo’s waist fondly. “Besides, I’m not sure I’m entirely depowered.”

“No?” It’s hard to be panicked when Hux is right there, gazing at him like he’s done something wonderful. Like he’s saved the world.

Like, just maybe, this time he’s the hero. 

“No. I’m still lucky.” Hux kisses him again, this time soft and gentle, like a promise of something more. Something strong and safe. “I have you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all of you very much for reading! As a reminder, check out @ninpotato on Tumblr and @ninpotato1 on Twitter to say hey and thanks to the artist and inspiration for this work. :)


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